The Product Manager Toolkit: 13 Tools From Discovery to Launch

A product manager's work moves through a few recurring stages, and each stage has its own typical tools. To understand customers, teams use Dovetail for interviews and Kimola for analyzing large volumes of feedback. To decide what to build, they use Productboard or Jira Product Discovery. Design and collaboration happen in Figma and Miro, delivery is planned in Jira, Linear or Asana, and new features are introduced to users with Appcues. To measure what happens after launch, teams use Amplitude and Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar), and they keep specs and decisions in Notion.

Few teams need all thirteen. Most product managers start with a document tool, a work tracker and an analytics tool, then add tools for discovery, prioritization and adoption as the product and the team grow. This guide is meant as a map of the work, so you can see which tool covers which job and where they connect.

This guide is written by the Kimola team. Kimola is our product, so we explain where it fits and where it doesn't, and we describe every other tool based on its public documentation.

What Product Managers Need From Their Tools

Product management is the work of deciding what a product should do and making sure it gets built and adopted. In practice that means understanding customers and their problems, choosing which problems to solve first, working with designers and engineers to build the solution, launching it, and checking whether it changed anything for users.

No single tool covers all of that, and the tools that matter most are the ones that connect. A useful toolkit lets a piece of customer feedback become an idea, the idea become a prioritized item on a roadmap, the roadmap item become engineering work, and the shipped work become something you can measure. When those links are missing, product managers spend their time copying information between tools instead of making decisions.

How We Chose These Tools

We included a tool only if it is a primary tool for at least one stage of a product manager's work and is widely used by product teams. We looked at what each tool does at that stage, how it connects to the others, whether it can be evaluated on a free plan or trial, and whether its pricing is published. Pricing for each tool comes from its own pricing page.

We left out general productivity tools, such as presentation, writing and video tools. Product managers use them every day, but so does everyone else, and they are not what makes a product toolkit different.

Understanding Customers

Dovetail

Dovetail is built for qualitative research such as interviews and usability tests. Product teams use it to store recordings and transcripts of customer conversations, tag what people say, and turn those tags into shared insights that others in the company can search. Dovetail now describes itself as a customer intelligence platform and also brings in sales calls, support cases and app reviews, with AI summaries and chat across that material.

Dovetail fits product managers who run regular customer interviews and want a single place where the team's research lives. It is strongest when the evidence comes from conversations the team has had itself. Teams whose main source is thousands of reviews or survey comments may need a tool designed to analyze feedback at that scale.

Pricing: Dovetail has a free plan with one channel and one project. The Enterprise plan is priced on request.

Kimola

Kimola is an AI platform that turns customer feedback into enterprise-grade market research. Product teams analyze the feedback they already have, such as app reviews, survey responses, support tickets and call transcripts, or collect public reviews by pasting a link. Where interviews give a product manager depth from a handful of customers, Kimola gives the same kind of understanding from thousands of comments.

Much of the most useful product feedback is already public. By pasting a link to an App Store, Google Play, Amazon or Trustpilot page, a product manager can collect and analyze the reviews on that page, including the pages of competing products. This is a quick way to learn why users of a competitor's app are unhappy before planning a feature that targets them.

Kimola finds themes in the data itself, without predefined labels, and gives each theme mentioned in a comment its own sentiment, which is known as aspect-based sentiment. A review that praises the new design but complains about sync errors counts as positive for design and negative for sync. Kimola also asks every comment research questions called Dimensions. For product managers, the most useful are Pain Points, Unmet Needs and Motivations. A request to "add dark mode" and a complaint that "the screen is too bright at night" point to the same unmet need, and Dimensions group them that way.

Kimola also helps with prioritization. If your file has columns such as plan type, platform or app version, Kimola compares every theme across them and over time, and only statistically significant differences become Signals. If crash complaints rise only on Android after the latest release, that appears as a Signal; a difference that could be chance does not. Scores are deterministic, so the same data always produces the same ranking, and they account for how many comments a theme has: a theme with 43 positive comments out of 50 ranks above one with 5 out of 5. Action Plans then turn the analysis into recommendations and keep only the ones the feedback supports. The same method works after a launch, when you want to know how users are reacting to what you shipped. On the Enterprise plan, a finding can be assigned as a Task, sent to Jira, and checked again two and four weeks after the work is done to see whether customers noticed the change.

Kimola does not run surveys, interviews or usability tests, and it is not a roadmap or work tracking tool. It analyzes the feedback that the other tools in this list collect, and the feedback that already exists online. The free Starter plan is limited to 150 queries per month, and Tasks and the Jira integration are available only on the Enterprise plan.

Pricing: Kimola has a free Starter plan with no credit card required. Paid plans start at $49 per month, and pricing is public. Larger organizations work with an account manager on the Enterprise plan.

Kimola fits product teams that have more feedback than they can read, or want to study competitors' users, and need to know which problems matter most and why. You can read more about how product teams use Kimola.

Prioritization and Roadmapping

Productboard

Productboard is a product management platform for collecting feedback, prioritizing features and sharing roadmaps. Feedback from tools such as Zendesk, Slack and Gong arrives in one place, where product managers link it to feature ideas, score ideas against objectives and publish roadmaps and portals for stakeholders. Its AI agent, Spark, summarizes feedback and suggests opportunities, with citations to the underlying notes.

Productboard fits product organizations that want a dedicated system between customer input and engineering work, especially when several product teams share one roadmap. It is a full platform that takes time to set up well, so a small team with a short backlog may find a lighter tool enough.

Pricing: Productboard has a free account with a limited monthly allowance of Spark credits and a 14-day trial. Paid plans are priced per maker, and details are on the Productboard pricing page.

Jira Product Discovery

Jira Product Discovery is Atlassian's tool for capturing ideas, prioritizing them and sharing roadmaps, built to sit next to Jira. Product managers collect ideas and supporting insights, compare them with custom fields and scoring, and build roadmap views for stakeholders. Ideas link directly to Jira epics and issues, so the roadmap stays in sync with delivery.

It fits teams that already run engineering work in Jira and want discovery in the same place. Its value depends on that connection, so teams that do not use Jira get less from it.

Pricing: Jira Product Discovery is free for up to 3 creators. Standard costs $10.50 and Premium $26.25 per creator per month on monthly billing, and Enterprise is priced on request. Contributors, who take part in discovery projects with fewer permissions, are free.

Design and Collaboration

Figma

Figma is a design and prototyping platform. Designers create interfaces and interactive prototypes in Figma Design, developers inspect them in Dev Mode, and teams run workshops in FigJam, its whiteboard. Figma Make generates working prototypes from a prompt, which some product managers use to test an idea before it reaches a designer.

Most product managers do not design in Figma, but they review, comment and present there. That matters for cost: Figma prices by seat type, and a Collab or Dev seat is often enough for a product manager. Teams outside product and design rarely need it.

Pricing: Figma has a free Starter plan. On the Professional plan, a Full seat costs $16, a Dev seat $12 and a Collab seat $3 per month. Organization and Enterprise plans are billed annually.

Miro

Miro is a collaborative whiteboard. Product teams use it for discovery workshops, user journey maps, story mapping and planning sessions, and its templates cover most common product exercises. Business plans add two-way sync with tools like Jira and Asana, so sticky notes from a workshop can become tickets.

Miro fits teams that think and plan visually, especially when they work remotely. A board is a good place to explore, but decisions and specs usually need to move into a document or tracking tool afterward.

Pricing: Miro has a free plan with three editable boards. Starter costs $8 and Business $20 per member per month on annual billing, and Enterprise is priced on request for 30 members or more.

Planning and Delivery

Jira

Jira is Atlassian's work tracking tool and the most common place where software teams plan and track engineering work. Product managers write epics and stories, plan sprints with engineers and follow progress on boards and timelines. It connects to Jira Product Discovery, Confluence and a large marketplace of integrations.

Jira fits engineering organizations of almost any size, and it is often already in place when a product manager joins. Its flexibility comes with configuration, and teams that do not maintain their setup can end up with workflows that are harder to use than the work requires.

Pricing: Jira has a free plan for up to 10 users with 2 GB of storage. Standard, Premium and Enterprise plans are priced per user, with current rates on the Jira pricing page.

Linear

Linear is a product development tool for planning and tracking software work. Teams manage issues, cycles and projects, plan larger efforts as initiatives on a roadmap, and route customer requests into the backlog through an intake layer. Its AI agent can take on delegated issues, from drafting requirements to opening pull requests.

Linear fits software teams, especially startups, that want a fast, opinionated workflow with little configuration. Organizations with many non-engineering teams or highly customized processes may find Jira or Asana a better match.

Pricing: Linear has a free plan with up to 250 issues and 2 teams. Basic costs $10 and Business $16 per user per month on annual billing, and Enterprise is priced on request.

Asana

Asana is a work management platform for teams and AI agents. Projects, goals and portfolios are connected, so a product manager can see who owns each piece of a launch, what it depends on and which goal it supports. AI Teammates can draft a project plan from a brief, flag work at risk of slipping and report on portfolio health.

For product managers, Asana is most useful for work that spans teams, such as a launch that involves marketing, sales, support and legal. Engineering work itself is usually tracked in Jira or Linear, so teams often use Asana alongside one of them rather than instead of it.

Pricing: Asana's Personal plan is free for up to 2 users. Starter costs $10.99 and Advanced $24.99 per user per month on annual billing ($13.49 and $30.49 on monthly billing), and Enterprise is priced on request.

Onboarding and Adoption

Appcues

Appcues is a customer engagement platform for in-app guides, messages and surveys, along with email and push. Product managers use it to walk new users through setup, announce a new feature at the moment it is relevant and ask short questions inside the product. Experiences are built without code, so the product team can change them without an engineering release.

Appcues fits teams whose challenge is adoption, when users sign up but do not reach the features that make them stay. Its surveys collect short in-app responses; analyzing a large volume of open-ended answers is a separate job.

Pricing: Appcues does not publish prices. Pricing depends on monthly active users and the number of published experiences across the Start, Grow and Enterprise plans, and a free trial is available after a call with the sales team.

Measuring Product Usage

Amplitude

Amplitude is a product analytics platform. It shows what users do inside a product: which onboarding steps they complete, which features they adopt or abandon and which groups keep coming back. The platform also includes session replay, experiments and feature flags, in-product guides and surveys, and an AI Feedback feature that summarizes feedback. Amplitude acquired Kraftful in 2025 and folded its feedback analysis capabilities into the platform.

Amplitude fits product teams that want to measure the effect of what they ship and run experiments in the same place. Reliable results depend on a well-planned event tracking setup, which usually needs engineering time at the start.

Pricing: Amplitude has a free plan with 2 million events per month, 10,000 session replays per month, one survey, one active feature experiment and unlimited feature flags. The Plus plan starts at $0 and scales with usage, and Growth and Enterprise plans are priced on request.

Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar)

Hotjar, the heatmap and session recording tool, merged into the Contentsquare Group on July 1, 2025, and new Hotjar accounts can no longer be created. Hotjar's heatmaps, recordings and surveys now live inside Contentsquare, an experience analytics platform.

Contentsquare shows how users move through a page: where they click, how far they scroll, where they hesitate and where errors interrupt them. For a product manager, a few session recordings of users failing at a step often explain a drop in a funnel faster than any chart. It is built for websites and web products, and it does not cover feedback that arrives through other channels, such as support tickets or app store reviews.

Pricing: Contentsquare has a free plan with 200,000 monthly sessions, one month of data access and basic surveys. The Growth plan starts at $39 per month, and the Pro and Enterprise plans are priced on request.

Documentation and Specs

Notion

Notion is a workspace for documents, wikis and simple databases. Product managers write requirement documents, keep meeting notes and decision logs, and build team wikis that link to roadmaps and designs elsewhere. On the Business plan, Notion AI includes an agent, AI meeting notes and search across connected tools.

Notion fits teams that want one flexible place for written product knowledge. That flexibility needs some structure from the team, or pages multiply and become hard to trust. Teams that run delivery in Jira often use Confluence for the same role.

Pricing: Notion has a free plan. Plus costs $10 and Business $20 per member per month, and Enterprise is priced on request. Annual billing saves up to 20%.

How to Build Your Product Management Toolkit

Start with three tools: a place to write, a place to track work and a way to measure usage. For most teams that means Notion, Jira or Linear, and Amplitude, all of which have free plans. Choose Linear if you are a small software team that wants speed with little setup, and Jira if your engineering organization already uses it or needs more configuration. Add Asana when launches involve several teams outside engineering.

When the backlog grows and decisions need clearer reasoning, add a prioritization tool. If you already use Jira, Jira Product Discovery keeps ideas and delivery in one place. If you want a dedicated system that brings feedback from many sources into prioritization and roadmaps for several product teams, Productboard is built for that.

For understanding customers, match the tool to your evidence. If you talk to customers regularly and want a shared home for interviews, Dovetail is the stronger fit. If you have thousands of reviews, survey comments or support tickets, or want to study competitors' public reviews, and need to know which problems matter most and why, Kimola is built for that. If you have a few dozen comments and the team can read them all, you may not need a dedicated analysis tool yet.

After launch, use Appcues to help users find new features, Amplitude to measure whether they adopt them and Contentsquare to see where they struggle on the page. Figma and Miro support the design and planning work in between.

Frequently Asked Questions

What tools do product managers use most?

Most product managers use a work tracker such as Jira or Linear, a design tool such as Figma, a document tool such as Notion or Confluence, and a product analytics tool such as Amplitude. Prioritization tools like Productboard or Jira Product Discovery and feedback tools like Dovetail or Kimola are added as the product and the team grow.

Is there a free product management toolkit?

Yes, at a basic level. Jira, Jira Product Discovery, Linear, Asana, Figma, Miro, Notion, Amplitude, Contentsquare and Dovetail all have free plans with limits, and Productboard has a free account. Kimola has a free Starter plan with 150 queries per month for analyzing feedback.

What is the difference between Productboard and Jira Product Discovery?

Both help product teams collect ideas, prioritize them and share roadmaps. Jira Product Discovery is built to work inside the Atlassian ecosystem and links ideas directly to Jira delivery, while Productboard is a standalone platform that brings in feedback from tools such as Zendesk, Slack and Gong and analyzes it with AI. Teams already on Jira often start with Jira Product Discovery.

What happened to Hotjar?

Hotjar merged into the Contentsquare Group on July 1, 2025, and new Hotjar accounts can no longer be created. Its heatmaps, recordings and surveys are now part of Contentsquare, which offers a free plan.

Why not just use ChatGPT to analyze user feedback?

General chat assistants work well for summarizing a small set of comments. Classifying thousands of records consistently, testing differences between segments statistically, getting the same result from the same data every time and showing the source of every number require a different kind of infrastructure, which is what dedicated feedback analysis tools provide.

Conclusion

A product management toolkit works best when each tool covers one stage of the work and passes information to the next: from customer feedback to prioritized ideas, from ideas to delivery, and from launch to measurement. Start small, add tools when a stage becomes a bottleneck, and choose based on the evidence and workflow your team already has. If you want to see what your users' feedback says about what to build next, you can start on Kimola's free Starter plan.