Productboard alternative: Get started with Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On

Looking for a way to collect and display product feedback/suggestions on your WordPress website?

With the Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On, you can create your own lightweight, self-hosted Productboard alternative.

You’ll be able to collect feedback/ideas via a frontend form, manage those suggestions on the backend, and display everything on an interactive frontend idea board.

In this post, we’ll introduce you to the add-on and how it works. Then, we’ll take you through a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to set up everything.

Note: The Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On is part of Gravity Labs — our home for experimental add-ons. It’s free with your Gravity Forms license, but it’s experimental and outside our official support. Labs is also how we learn what our community wants to see in the product, so if you try it, let us know what you think.

Why use the Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On?

The Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On offers a WordPress-native, cost-effective solution for collecting product feedback, managing the status/implementation of those features, and displaying everything on a frontend idea board that your customers can interact with.

You can create a form using Gravity Forms to collect feedback, just like you’d create any other form on your site.

Then, the Feedback Add-On lets you take those form submissions and manage them via a backend Kanban interface, as well as display them on a frontend idea board that looks something like this:

As we mentioned above, it works well as a lightweight Productboard alternative, or as any alternative for other similar systems to collect and display customer feedback.

At the same time, it can save you money (because it’s included with your Gravity Forms license at no extra cost). It’s also 100% self-hosted, which lets you keep all of your data on your own servers.

Here are some of the key features of the Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On:

• Add a Feedback feed to any form to send form submissions to your idea board.
• Manage feedback/ideas on the backend via a drag-and-drop Kanban-style board.
• Display approved ideas on the frontend in an interactive idea board. Visitors can filter by status, type of idea, etc. You can add the idea board anywhere on your site using a shortcode.
• Visitors can vote on ideas so that you can understand which ideas your customers are most interested in. You can also give customers the option to leave comments on ideas, including the ability to moderate comments before they display.
• Detailed settings area to customize the idea board, including labels, filters, and more.

Full tutorial: How to use WordPress and Gravity Forms as a ProductBoard alternative

Now that you know a little bit more about what the Feedback Add-On offers, let’s get into the step-by-step guide on how to use it on your site.

We’ll cover the entire process, including creating the feedback form, setting up your idea board page, and managing feedback on the backend of your site.

Let’s get into it…

1. Install the Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On

To get started, you need to install and activate the Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On on your site, alongside the core Gravity Forms plugin.

As we mentioned above, the Feedback Add-On is currently part of Gravity Labs. While these add-ons are free with any Gravity Forms license, they sit outside the normal suite of Gravity Forms add-ons.

First, you need to download the add-on from the Gravity Labs website:

1. Go to the Feedback Add-On page at Gravity Labs.
2. Log in to your existing Gravity Forms account on Gravity Labs, if you haven’t done so already.
3. Click Download.

After downloading the add-on’s ZIP file to your local computer, you can upload and install it like any other WordPress plugin:

1. Go to Plugins → Add Plugin in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Click the Upload Plugin button.
3. Select the ZIP file and click Install Now.
4. On the next screen, make sure to activate the plugin.

2. Create your frontend feedback form

Next, you’ll need to create the form that you’ll use to receive feedback, ideas, feature requests, etc.

You can largely structure the form as you want it to. The only required field is that you have a title for the feedback suggestion.

However, when you set up your feedback feed in the next section, you also have the option to map form fields to some or all of the following feedback fields in addition to the title field:

• Description – This lets you/others add a more detailed description of the feedback.
• Author name – This lets you/others add the name of the person submitting the feedback.
• Author email – This lets you/others add the email address of the person submitting the feedback.
• Target – This lets you/others specify the area that the feedback relates to. For example, if you have multiple products, you could let people choose which product the feedback is for. Or, you could list multiple areas within a single product.
• Type – This lets you/others specify what kind of feedback it is. For example, “Bug”, “Feature Request”, “Improvement”, etc.
• Importance – This lets you/others specify how important the feedback is. For example, “Critical” or “Minor”.
• Source – This lets you specify the source of the feedback. For example, social media, email etc. This is usually more applicable if you’re using the feedback form internally. That is, you or your team are using the form to add feedback collected from other sources.
• Progress – This lets you specify the progress of the feedback item. For example, “Open”, “Planned”, “Completed”, etc. Again, this usually only applies to internal usage. 

If you also want to sync any of that information, you should include those fields in your form.

For our example form, we’ve included fields for every single feedback element. However, as we mentioned above, the feedback title is the only 100% required element.

3. Create a Feedback feed for your form

After you’ve set up your form fields, the next step is to create a feedback feed for that form.

To get started, go to Settings → Feedback inside of the form editor. Then, click Add New to create your feed.

Then, you can set up your feed by mapping the fields from your form to the fields in the feedback board.

Again, the only mapping that you must set up is the title, but you should also set up any field mappings that apply to your form.

You also have the option to add conditional logic rules, though that’s not necessary for most use cases.

Once you’ve set up all of the relevant field mappings, make sure to click the Save Settings button at the bottom.

4. Embed your feedback form

To finish out the form-side of your feedback board, you need to embed the form somewhere on your site where relevant people can use it.

Depending on how you’re collecting feedback, that could be a…

• Page where only internal members of your team can access it.
• Public page that anyone can use.
• Restricted page for customers. For example, you could restrict the form so that only logged-in users can use it by going to Settings → Form Settings → Restrictions. This would allow you to collect feedback from logged-in customers, but not from anonymous visitors.

You can embed the form anywhere on your site using the Gravity Forms block, shortcode, or PHP function.

5. Add the feedback shortcode to publicly display the ideas board

In addition to the feedback form that you use to collect feedback, the add-on also lets you display a public idea board that lists each piece of feedback, along with its details.

Typically, you will display this feedback board on a separate page from the feedback form, though you are free to include both on the same page if you want.

Here’s how to display the idea board on your website:

1. Create a new page or edit an existing page where you want to display the idea board.
2. Add the [gf_feedback] shortcode where you want the board to appear.
3. Publish or update the page.

6. Configure the Feedback Add-On settings

Once you’ve added the shortcode, you can configure the rest of the add-on’s general settings.

You can access them by going to Forms → Settings in your WordPress dashboard sidebar. Then, select the Feedback tab inside the settings area.

Here, you’ll get a number of settings to configure the behavior of the board.

For example, whether to moderate ideas before displaying them on the board, whether to allow comments, who can vote on ideas, etc.

You also get lots of options for board filters and labels.

7. Manage feedback ideas

Once people start submitting ideas via your feedback form, you’ll be able to manage things in a few different places.

First, you get a dedicated Kanban board on the backend that lets you manage ideas.

You can drag and drop ideas between different statuses. You can also easily hide ideas by unchecking the box.

If you go to the Moderation tab, you can also moderate comments that appear on ideas.

As with any form submission, you’ll also be able to see individual ideas in the form entry dashboard (Forms → Entries → Select your form from the drop-down).

Ideas will also display on the frontend of your site where you added the idea board shortcode.

Try the Gravity Forms Feedback Add-On from Gravity Labs

The Feedback Add-On is available now in Gravity Labs. It’s free with any Gravity Forms license. As a Labs add-on, it’s experimental and sits outside our standard support — and your feedback helps shape what we build next. If you give it a try, we’d love to hear how it works for you.

Whether you’re specifically looking for a Productboard alternative or you’re just looking for an easy way to collect, manage, and display feedback/ideas from your customers, give it a try and let us know if it’s worth bringing to the official Gravity Forms add-on library.