We Found The Best Product Roadmap Examples for SaaS Startups

SaaS products need to be able to adapt and evolve quickly. If you don’t, someone else will—and they might just take your customers with them.

But planning, scheduling, prioritizing, and managing changes (both big and small) can be challenging.

A great product roadmap can simplify things—for you and your users.

In this post, we’ll examine 9 inspiring examples of SaaS product roadmaps to help you create one that works for you. We’ll also discuss the approaches, strategies, and tools these companies use.

Let's get started! 👇

Jump to the examples:

1. Checkly
2. Buffer
3. ClickUp
4. SocialBee
5. Linkish
6. Front
7. Mixpanel
8. Loom

Why listen to us?

We’ve helped hundreds of SaaS companies build public (and private) roadmaps that not only keep their teams aligned and on track, but also:

• Impress customers
• Generate actionable data
• Automate routine tasks

…and more.

The bottom line—we know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to creating a successful product roadmap.

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is a “living document” that outlines your plans for developing your product.

Product roadmaps can take all kinds of forms, but typically, they show a rough overview of planned releases and updates for a product. They can also include key features, votes and comments, and any other important information to guide the development process.

For example, take Structured’s product roadmap:

Each card represents a feature or a bug requested by users (or added by the team). The roadmap is public, and users have voted and commented on suggestions to help product managers prioritize. Each card is organized into a column to show its current status—“Planned,” “In Progress,” or “Completed.”

It’s a simple way to keep users informed while also guiding the team’s development work.

Benefits of using a product roadmap

There are tons of things we could talk about here, but we’ll stick with the highlights:

• Better data: A public roadmap is a great source of high-quality data. The kinds of users who seek out roadmaps (generally) tend to be the ones who are most passionate about the product. They have insights, and a roadmap (especially when paired with voting, comments, feature requests, etc.) is an opportunity for them to share those insights. 
• Better user transparency: Users like to be in the loop—that’s why they found the roadmap in the first place. A product roadmap is a place where they can see what’s in the works, what’s up next, and how their feedback is influencing the product.
• Better team alignment: Whether your product roadmap is public or private, it can help you align your team. When everyone has a clear idea of where the product is supposed to be 3, 6, 9, and 12 months down the line, they have a better idea of what they need to focus on day-to-day.

The 9 best product roadmap examples for SaaS startups

1. Checkly

Checkly is a powerful synthetic monitoring tool for developers and DevOps teams. 

Their public roadmap was built with Featurebase and is used alongside their public feedback portal and changelog.

Their process starts with feedback. Users can submit their ideas for Checkly’s product roadmap as posts to the public feedback portal using the “Feature Request” tag. These posts collect votes and comments that help the team prioritize and understand the value of each feature idea.

Once Checkly decides to proceed with a suggestion, it is added to the public roadmap. The team sets the status based on where the suggestion is in the development process. Users who suggested the feature automatically receive email updates about the status changes.

The last step in the process is the changelog. This is where Checkly closes the feedback loop by updating users on the features that have been released through more in-depth posts.

Key takeaways

• Make user feedback easy: Make user feedback simple, accessible, and transparent. Featurebase helps with this by letting your users automatically transition from your app to your feedback portal without creating an account or signing in.
• Use voting for priorities: Look for a tool like Featurebase that supports voting. This will help your team with surface-level prioritization that considers the wants and needs of your users.
• Incorporate user data: Dive deeper into user data when prioritizing features. Use tools like Featurebase to enrich customers’ feedback with additional info like MRR, industry, and more to prioritize better.
• Automate updates & notifications: Don’t leave updates and notifications up to chance. Use tools like Featurebase to automatically notify users of product updates as you complete your roadmap.

2. Buffer

Buffer is a social media management tool that’s constantly pushing new features.

Their public feedback portal and roadmap were built with featureOS. Users log in using their Buffer credentials and can vote on existing features or submit new ideas. Everything is searchable (with both keywords and tags), and users can follow features to receive release notes.

Key takeaways

• Maintain a dynamic roadmap: Buffer’s roadmap is always being tweaked and updated, and you should strive for the same. Keep your users informed and engaged by regularly adding new features and improvements to your roadmap.
• Reflect your iterative development: If you’re only building out part of a feature at a time, make sure your roadmap reflects that. Give users details on what specific updates they can expect.

3. ClickUp

ClickUp is a cloud-based platform that provides a complete set of project management and collaboration tools. It lets teams handle tasks, documents, goals, and chats in one place, making work more efficient using one app instead of many.

ClickUp's public roadmap uses the standard “Planned, In Progress, Completed” structure. It also supports feature requests and voting, so anyone searching the roadmap can see what’s in the pipeline, add suggestions, and vote on existing ones.

Key takeaways

• Use tags: ClickUp uses tags to help users (and admins) organize their feedback and feature requests into categories. This helps keep things from getting too overwhelming—even with almost 20k+ requests in total.
• Summarize your roadmap: ClickUp has a separate “roadmap” (really more of a changelog) that categorizes everything they’ve launched in the past quarter. It’s a great way for users to get up to speed without scrolling all the way through the “Completed” tab.

4. SocialBee

SocialBee is an AI-powered tool that simplifies social media management.

Their roadmap is a (relatively) simple Trello board with columns for “Maybe”, “Next Up”, “In Progress”, “Done”, and “On Hold”. Users can vote and comment on suggestions in the “Maybe” column to increase their chances of moving to “Next Up”. 

The entire roadmap is also color-coded by product area, with a key located on the left-hand side. This gives users a quick way to identify the features that are relevant to them.

Key takeaways

• Create a roadmap key: Make it easy for your users to understand your roadmap by giving them tools to understand different product areas. Color coding, definitions, and other visual aids can make a complex roadmap more digestible.
• Use your roadmap to create marketing assets: Every quarter, SocialBee creates a polished graphic to showcase their roadmap on social media. This increases visibility and creates excitement around upcoming features.
• Get active in the comments: SocialBee always has someone from their team monitoring the comments and responding to questions or feedback. This shows users that their opinions are valued and helps build a sense of community.

5. Linkish

Linkish makes saving, organizing, and managing web links easy. It offers features for bookmarking, shortening links, and embedding, plus folders and tags for organization.

Linkish’s roadmap approach is simple, and focuses on the customer. They have a simple board with clearly written feature cards, comments, voting, and hashtags for easy searching. They’ve also customized their roadmap’s statuses quite a bit, with columns for:

• Voting
• Consideration
• Planning
• Upcoming
• Developing
• Testing

This gives users even more visibility into the process.

Key takeaways

• Customize your roadmap: You don’t need to stick to the standard roadmap format. If you want to make it more relevant and useful for your team or customers, feel free to add your own columns, statuses, or categories.
• Get input from users: Linkish’s approach of including voting and comments on their roadmap allows them to gather valuable feedback from their customers. They also respond to comments to let users know their feedback is being taken onboard.

6. Front

Front provides a shared space for emails, apps, and teamwork. It helps teams manage shared inboxes and boost customer service by uniting communication and business tools.

Front uses customers’ votes and feedback to decide what features and bugs to work on next. After discussing the plan internally, they move the feature to their public roadmap. It’s a simple one—there are no categories or expected delivery dates, just an announcement that the feature is “in the works.”

According to Front, you want to give users visibility into what you’re working on without making any strict promises about delivery. This allows for flexibility in timelines and avoids disappointing customers if things don't go according to plan.

Key takeaways

• Keep it simple: Roadmaps don’t need to be complicated—at their most minimalist, they’re essentially just lists of planned features and updates. Users tend to appreciate more transparency, but it isn’t necessary for every company.
• Use tagging and analytics: Front organizes customer feedback with tags and tracks trends and requests volumes with analytics. This makes roadmap planning more informed and systematic.
• Use shared inboxes for feedback: The Front team uses a shared inbox, so everyone can see what’s coming in, making it easier to prioritize and track feedback. This also allows for collaboration and discussion on potential features.

7.  Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a powerful data analytics platform that helps businesses track and analyze user behavior.

While they don’t have a public roadmap, their engineering, design, and product teams share a private product roadmap built with Notion. It’s designed to give everyone at-a-glance insights into what’s being developed, why, and how far along it is.

They’ve prioritized tons of documentation for things like FAQs, background context, and prioritization so that everyone can make progress without constantly checking in and getting approval.

Key takeaways

• Over-document processes: Okay, maybe not to the point of insanity, but having everything documented means fewer meetings and more time for actual work. Notion is an excellent tool for organizing and sharing this documentation.
• Create cross-functional roadmaps: Products are cross-functional, meaning you need to give all functions visibility into what’s being shipped and when. Just make sure you still have spaces where teams can focus on their specific tasks.

8. Loom

Loom is a video messaging tool for recording and sharing videos, offering a more personal touch than texts. Businesses use it to boost teamwork with video updates and feedback that don’t need real-time responses.

Loom’s roadmap is key to its product-led growth plan. They use three categories to keep things simple—”Coming Soon”, “Under Consideration”, and “Launched”. Their board is also divided horizontally into categories based on product area.

In addition to this public roadmap, Loom uses Google Sheets to organize the internal side of roadmapping—prioritizing features, setting timelines, and assigning owners. They also use their own product to share high-level roadmap updates without calling meetings.

Key takeaways

• Internal tools don’t need to be polished: Everyone wants their internal tools to look nice—but a basic tool that does the job is better than a beautiful tool that doesn’t. External tools like public roadmaps need to balance both.
• Leverage product-led growth: Aim for product-led growth, making the product key in gaining and keeping users. Make sure it’s easy to use, valuable from the start, and makes users want to spread the word.
• Engage stakeholders regularly: Keep in touch with all stakeholders, like team members, investors, and users. Frequent updates and chances for feedback keep everyone involved and committed to the product’s success.

How to build a product roadmap

You’ll be surprised by how straightforward it is to build a beautiful, functional product roadmap.

Here’s a quick overview of the process:

1. Choose a roadmapping tool: Unless you intend to build a custom roadmap, you’ll need a tool. Look for a tool that offers all the features you need (and want)—including voting, comments, automation, etc. At Featurebase, we offer all these features and more, making it easy to create and share your roadmap with others.

2. Set your product strategy: Decide on your product's main goals and the actions it will take to get there. Understand your market, customer needs, and company’s aims. Your plan will guide the creation of your roadmap, showing what you’ll deliver and when.
3. Capture the “Why:” Tell your team and stakeholders why you’re developing your product and what problems it will solve. This unites everyone with a common aim and ensures your roadmap aligns with your product strategy and goals.
4. Collect multiple viewpoints: Collect feedback from customers, your team, and stakeholders. This will make your roadmap well-rounded and inclusive. Tools like Featurebase make it easy to collect feedback by letting you set up an intuitive feedback portal. Be sure to use different methods like surveys, polls, and in-app feedback forms to get even more responses.

1. Use a prioritization framework: Decide how you’ll prioritize features and fixes. Roadmap votes are a great start. But, with tools like Featurebase, you can prioritize features with prioritize features popular  with value/effort frameworks and even link customers’ revenue to their feedback.

1. Communicate clearly and often: Make sure everyone knows about the roadmap and its updates. Featurebase makes this easy with automatic updates for every user who interacts with a given suggestion.

1. Be transparent and realistic: Be clear, and don’t promise too much. Your roadmap should be bold but doable, showing a true picture of what your team can achieve in the set time.

Conclusion

Product roadmaps are strategic guides for growth and engaging customers. They focus on what’s important, listen to users, and bring new tech to improve products. For any SaaS company, these steps are key to a better product and happy users.

As we’ve seen, SaaS product roadmaps vary quite a bit. You have extremely minimalist product roadmaps that essentially just list features and more complex ones that include detailed timelines, user feedback, automated updates, and more.

The right approach is whatever works for you—but at Featurebase, we believe your roadmap is a powerful opportunity for data-driven decision-making. We’ve built our product around this principle, and we’re proud to see the difference it makes for our customers.

Sign up today for free to build your product roadmap →

More reading:

• Should Your Company Have a Public Roadmap? →
• 12 Public Roadmap Examples for SaaS Companies in 2024 →
• A Simple 6-Step Guide to Plan & Prioritize Your Product Roadmap Effectively →
• Top 7 Public Roadmap Tools for SaaS Companies in 2024 →