Top 3 Free Online Retrospective Tools for 2023

Retrospectives can also be made fun and engaging if you choose the right tool. The one that fits your team needs can help to continuously optimize your team processes.

Evaluating online retrospective tools

There are several online tools available to conduct retrospective meetings that work on a vendo website or as a bot directly within your existing communication tool like Slack. If you are looking for a reliable free online retrospective tool, you are likely looking at 3 key factors.

Covers the features for your team needs
Tool is reliable and vendor business is sustainable
Cost of upgrade is affordable when your team needs grow

With Slack based tools, your team does not have to set up and learn another tool and it is much easier to onboard and engage with the team. If your team is not using Slack already, we highly recommend it for agile teams.

In this blog we will compare 2 popular Slack based retrospective tools, Troopr and Standuply and one that works on vendor website, Funretro. There are quite a few funretro-like tools that come with almost the same set of features. Troopr, Standuply and Funretro offer free tiers in their pricing plans.

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Comparison of free tiers

The 3 vendors we picked for comparison offer all the basic features like customizable questions, voting, report generation and tracking action items. In this blog we look primarily at how these tools compare to help you decide which may be a good bet for your team.

Free tier user restriction

Troopr - teams of any size can avail the free version of Troopr Check-in with access to one free Check-in for your team

Standuply - 1 team upto 3 members - unlimited team meetings

Funretro - No team support - up to 3 public meetings/boards (anyone can see)

Free tier feature limitations

Troopr - Most features

Standuply - Limited features

Funretro - No team support - up to 3 public meetings/boards (anyone can see). No Jira integration

Key features comparison

Troopr - $49pm (3 check-ins, unlimited users)

Standuply - $120pm (unlimited teams, up to 48 users)

Funretro - $60pm (up to 6 teams, unlimited users)

Large organization: (unlimited teams)

For unlimited private meetings, Jira integration

Troopr - $129pm (unlimited check-ins, unlimited users)

Standuply - $680pm (unlimited teams, up to 200 users)

Funretro - $90pm (up to 6 teams, unlimited users)

*as of May 2022

All the three tools support teams of larger size and involve the cost of upgrades.

Although tools like these simplify the retrospective process, they require the entire team to onboard and learn another tool.

You can also analyse what workflow tools that you are already using and try to make the most use of it. If your team is already using Slack for workplace collaboration, then Slack retrospective bots can be a must try to make your team effective and happy without creating additional application overload.

Retrospectives are one of many ceremonies for your Scrum team. Having the team use a tool just for retrospective and another tool for other meetings is neither scalable nor desirable. This is where Slack bots can be of greater advantage. These online retrospective Slack bots provide all the features available in these tools, plus it works completely in Slack. All the actions can be fulfilled without ever leaving Slack.

Additionally, your team need not be on the Slack paid version to start using the Slack retrospective bots. All the functionalities are designed to work seamlessly well in the free version of Slack. And if your team isn't on Slack, here’s why your team can love this messenger.

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Why Troopr

Troopr asynchronous check-in automation for your team is not only for retrospectives. You can setup and automate your Daily Standups, Sprint Planning, Planning Poker, Backlog grooming and more in Slack. Your team need not learn another tool and it provides an opportunity to hold most of your common scrum ceremonies deeply integrated with Jira asynchronously in Slack.

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Getting Starting with Troopr

Troopr Slack bot for Jira is designed to fit teams of any size and already trusted by teams at Intel, Adobe, Electronic Arts, Delivery Hero and more.

Get started from Atlassian Marketplace or Slack App Directory.

Once your Jira instance is connected to Slack workspace, Troopr prompts to automatically match user profiles from Slack to Jira, followed by account verification. The entire process is simple and takes under a minute.

Once connected, Troopr lets you configure and run online retrospectives in Slack deeply integrated with Jira. Troopr retrospectives are easy and can be configured in 3 simple steps.

Configure schedule and participants
Choose the retrospective questions
Configure reporting options

Once setup, Troopr sends the retrospective questions at the configured time.The participants can file their responses at a comfortable time during their day. If someone fails to remember to file their response within the time-boxed schedule, Troopr automatically sends a reminder encouraging them to contribute.

Troopr automatically aggregates these responses into beautiful reports and shares in common Slack channel and web portal. These reports comes with action buttons letting users to add and track action items in Jira.