11 product management tools to help you generate valuable PX insights

To get valuable, actionable PX insights, you need PX-friendly product management tools to help you understand how users actually experience your product—including their struggles and moments of delight.

Get started by taking a look at these eleven product management tools, and choose the tool you need based on the type of user insights they help you generate.

1. Hotjar: user behavior and product experience insights

Hotjar helps you empathize with your users by connecting the dots between what happens in your product, and why it happens.

See how people experience your product—where they click, which elements they look at and interact with, and whether they experience frustration—through color-coded Heatmaps and video-based Session Recordings.

Dig deeper into the product experience and collect in-the-moment user feedback with on-site and offsite Surveys and an Incoming Feedback widget.

Some key features:

• Filters for Session Recordings: instead of watching thousands of recordings, filter them to find the sessions that'll give you the specific insight you need. You can filter by sessions that include rage clicks, users who came to your website from specific traffic sources, users who left negative feedback, and more.

• Survey triggers: trigger on-site surveys when users take specific actions, like clicking a specific element of a page or after they reach a certain part in your product's onboarding.

• Connecting feedback responses to Session Recordings: connect user feedback from Surveys and Incoming Feedback widgets with Recordings to connect the dots between what users say (feedback response) and what they experienced when they visited your website (recording).

How to use it: sign up to Hotjar, install the tracking code on your site, and you're set! Hotjar's free plan lets you record 35 user sessions per day and generate heatmaps for all of your pages based on those same 35 sessions. It also allows you to create three Surveys and three Incoming Feedback widgets. Hotjar also offers paid palns that capture 100–4,000 sessions per day depending on your traffic, unlimited Surveys and Incoming Feedback widgets, as well as advanced filters, integrations, and custom data.

2. Fullstory: digital experience intelligence

Fullstory indexes every user interaction with your website and creates dashboards with data—like average session duration and events per session—to help you analyze user behavior. Fullstory also gives you access to live recordings of user interactions, so you can watch rage clicks, error clicks, button clicks, mouse movements, and scrolling as they happen.

Some key features:

• Session replay options: fast-forward a session replay or skip periods of inactivity. You can also add notes to session replays.*

• Signals: identify factors that may impact your conversion rates—like script errors, device-specific bugs, slow-loading pages, and frustrating workflows.

How to use it: sign up for FullStory’s free plan and get access to analytics for 1,000 visitor sessions per month. FullStory also offers a two-week trial where you can access features like session replays, frustration signals, heatmaps, and user trends.

* You can do this with Hotjar's Session Recordings too! Read our full comparison of Hotjar vs Fullstory to learn more.

3. UserLeap: user research

UserLeap is a user research tool that pushes micro surveys to your users while they’re on your site. You can use these surveys to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback from users about product features, content, and upcoming changes. UserLeap offers an in-house research team and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help you analyze users' answers to open-ended survey questions.

Some key features:

• Targeting: push surveys to users based on actions they take within your product, like search, purchase, and return, or based on how often they open your app.

• Resurvey rules: set rules to avoid showing surveys to the same customers over and over.

• Templates: choose from over 75 micro survey templates related to customer onboarding, churn, content, product pricing, and product launch.

   

   

  related to customer onboarding, churn, content, product pricing, and product launch.

How to use it: create a free UserLeap account and show micro surveys on desktop and mobile apps for up to 5,000 monthly visitors. Paid plans also offer email micro survey delivery, open-ended micro survey design, and custom micro survey design.

4. Grain: video recording

Grain records, annotates, transcribes, and shares Zoom calls and can be used for sales calls, product demos, or live user tests. Product teams can use Grain to conduct user research—record Zoom calls with customers to gauge their experience with a product, and share the most important bits of customer feedback with your team.

Some key features:

• Clipping: create clips of only the most important parts of a video, categorize them in your video library, and add relevant tags to clips.

• Annotations: add context to recorded video clips with comments and notes.

• Sharing: easily share product insights with team members in Notion, Slack, or Miro.

How to use it: Grain’s free plan includes three recordings per month of up to 45 minutes each, along with real-time caption and clipping. Paid plans offer 15 to unlimited recordings per month, transcripts, and priority support, depending on the plan you choose.

5. QualSights: visual customer research

QualSights lets you conduct different types of qualitative product research like mobile ethnography, video surveys, digital interviews, and remote focus groups.

Product teams can observe customers in real-time as they use a product, interact with them remotely, and view pre-recorded customer interviews.

Key features:

• Survey recruitment: recruit participants from anywhere in the world for user tests.

• AI analysis: analyze transcripts, keywords, and customer sentiment using AI.

How to use it: request a demo on the QualSights website to try the platform’s user research features. Pricing plans are available on request.

6. Productboard: product roadmap planning

Productboard consolidates customer feedback from different sources like customer service tools, internal chat apps, sales conversations, and customer-facing chat apps in one place, to make it easier to filter and understand.

Some key features:

• Prioritization: prioritize feature requests based on the number and type of customers (free, paid, premium) who request it.

• Tags: add relevant tags to customer feedback for easy access.

• Roadmaps: use customer feedback to create detailed product roadmaps.

How to use it: sign up for a free 15-day trial and collect customer feedback in a central repository, prioritize product features, and validate ideas with customers. Plans start from $20 per month for the Essentials plan to $100 per month for the Scale plan, and a custom plan for enterprises.

7. UserTesting: video-based user testing

UserTesting helps you collect customer feedback through video-based user tests for both real-world and digital products.

Choose relevant audiences for testing and view self-recorded customer experiences or interact with users live as they use your product.

Some key features:

• Comprehensive data: capture audio, video, facial expressions, and clickstream data to get a complete overview of the customer experience.

• Mobile app testing: test new and unreleased mobile apps to understand why users abandon apps and what makes them power users.

• Templates: choose from different test templates, including card sorting, system usability testing, competitor analysis, and customer personas.

How to use it: request a free trial to check out UserTesting’s features. Pricing is flexible, depending on the features you need, the size of your team, and the number of tests you need to conduct. The most basic Essentials plan includes a test builder with templates, demographic filters, and integrations with Slack and Trello.

8. Mixpanel: product analytics

Mixpanel builds reports based on your customers’ product usage and gives you data on the most popular product features, paths that users take after they sign up, and popular user actions. Product managers can use these reports to nudge more users towards actions that lead to conversion and retention.

Some key features:

• Segmentation: group users based on the actions they take inside your product, user location, and user device, and compare user retention across different user segments.

• Dashboards: create customizable dashboards to track important metrics like active users, new users, and key actions completed.

• Group Analytics: learn how different users at the same account or company use your product together. This feature is especially popular with B2B software companies, where multiple teams or stakeholders often use the same tool.

How to use it: sign up for a Mixpanel’s free plan and track activity for 100K monthly users. Paid plans also include customer support, group analytics, and advanced reports.

9. Amplitude: digital optimization

Amplitude’s analytics platform replicates the exact path customers take within a product—from when they view a landing page to when they convert into a subscriber or customer. Product teams can use this data to learn which user paths lead to delight and retention, and common points of friction that cause users to drop off.

Some key features:

• Events: track each event or action a user takes within your product, like completing an action, selecting an option, or making a payment.

• Segmentation: analyze activities of specific user groups like new users, daily users, dormant users, or users who have returned after churning.

• Multi-device analytics: monitor product usage across different devices like mobile and desktop to answer questions like, “Which users sign up on desktop and switch to mobile?”

• Reports: get access to real-time reports to track important metrics like active users, lifetime value of each user segment, and best-performing marketing campaigns.

How to use it: Amplitude’s free plan offers analytics data for 10 million user actions per month. Paid plans include behavioral reports, predictive analytics, and automated insights.

10. Maze: remote user testing

Maze lets users test wireframes and prototypes of your product, so you can identify points of friction and design better experiences. You can also collect customer feedback on newly released features and products with multiple choice and open surveys.

Some key features:

• Browser-based testing: share test URLs with users remotely and let them complete tests on the device and browser of their choice.

• Multiple test types: run different usability tests—like card sorting and 5-second tests—to experiment with ideas, concepts, copy and content, and wireframes or prototypes. Design mission-based tests, offer multiple-choice questions, or directly ask customers for feedback.

• Reports: get pre-built reports to track bounce rates, clicks, error clicks, heatmaps, and usability scores to see how your products and features perform.

How to use it: create a free Maze account and conduct up to three tests or surveys, with up to ten questions. To create more tests and questions, and access priority support, sign up for one of the paid plans.

11. Pendo: product experience

Pendo compiles common product usage patterns, most-used product features, and user actions in handy reports. Product managers can identify the number of clicks users make to complete key actions in a product, and design shorter paths to help users find value quickly.

The app lets you run Net Promoter Score® (NPS) and other surveys on your app or website to capture customer requests.

Some key features:

• Cross-platform analytics: see which features users adopt and which ones they ignore on your website or app.

• Targeted surveys: show surveys to users based on product interactions and user type to get more responses.

• Data compilation: view product usage data alongside responses to NPS surveys to identify which features lead to customer delight and which ones lead to frustration.

How to use it: use Pendo’s free plan to track product usage for 1,000 monthly active users. Paid plans, available on request, offer advanced insights, sentiment analysis, and roadmap planning.

Choosing the right tool for your product team

Here’s what to consider when choosing product management tools for your product team:

• Ease of use: product experience insights tools with a steep learning curve and complex interface may be too cumbersome for your team to use, and won’t provide much value to your team.

• Complexity of your product: complex products with several types of user actions or users may need access to advanced analytics solutions like Amplitude, whereas teams with simpler products may not need such extensive analytics data.

• Size of your product team: smaller product teams may require simpler tools that don’t require data analytics skills to understand user behavior, whereas product teams with analytics specialists may want a tool that collects and analyzes larger volumes of data. Small product teams may also not have the time to understand product usage at a level as advanced as larger teams.

• Type of product insights you need: some tools generate quantitative insights like product usage and heatmaps, while others generate qualitative insights like customer feedback. Choose tools that help you generate the type of insights your team currently lacks.

Other than the aspects listed above, also consider the level of support provided by the tool to help you get started. While reviewing product management tools, you may find no one tool fulfills all of your product team’s needs. While some tools show you how people use your product, others let you ask them how they feel about their product experience.

Build a diverse PX tools stack to meet your team’s objectives, whether it’s understanding your customer’s motivations, building a better product roadmap, or boosting product usage.