A feedback board is a shared page where customers post product requests, vote on the requests they want most, and follow each one as the team moves it through statuses such as Planned, In progress and Shipped. It gathers feedback that would otherwise be scattered across email, chat, sales notes and support tickets into one list that customers can read and add to. This guide covers how boards work, how they differ from surveys and support inboxes, public versus private boards, moderation, when a board is the wrong tool, and how to launch one.
What is a feedback board?
A feedback board is a public or private page, run by a product team, where each customer request is a post that other customers can vote on and comment under. Before submitting, a customer searches the existing posts; if their idea is already there, they add a vote and perhaps a comment about their situation instead of creating a copy. The team reads the board, merges duplicates, replies officially, and sets a status on each post so everyone can see what is being considered, planned, built or declined. Anyone who voted or followed a post is told when that status changes. The result is a living, ranked list of what customers want, built by the customers themselves. Support can link to a post instead of retyping an answer, sales can add a prospect's vote, and product can see how much demand sits behind a request before deciding what to do with it.
How is a feedback board different from a survey, NPS or a support inbox?
The main difference is who starts the conversation and who can see it. A survey asks the questions you chose, at a time you chose, and the answers stay private. Net Promoter Score is a single question, how likely someone is to recommend you on a zero-to-ten scale, reduced to one number: the share of promoters (9 or 10) minus the share of detractors (0 to 6). It tells you sentiment moved, not which capability moved it. A support inbox is customer-initiated but one-to-one, so the fifth person asking for the same export has no idea the other four exist, and nobody counts them. A feedback board is customer-initiated and many-to-many. Requests arrive when the need arises, in the customer's own words, and each new person adds weight to an existing post rather than starting a separate thread. That makes demand countable, and it makes your answer visible to everyone who asked.
Each channel does a different job, and feature voting vs NPS covers how the two signals complement each other.
| Channel | Who starts it | What you learn | Visible to other customers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feedback board | The customer | What people want built, and how many want it | Yes, on a public board |
| Survey | Your team | Answers to the questions you asked | No |
| NPS | Your team | One loyalty score and an optional comment | No |
| Support inbox | The customer | Individual problems, one conversation at a time | No |
Should a feedback board be public or private?
Make it public by default and private when confidentiality or audience demands it. A public board is open to anyone with the link and can be found through search engines. It collects the most votes, shows prospects that you listen, and lets customers see that their idea already exists before they post it again. A private board is invite-only: the same posts, votes and statuses, visible only to a list of people you control. Private is the right choice for enterprise customers who cannot post publicly, beta programmes under NDA, client portals run by agencies, and internal IT or operations queues where the requesters are employees. Many teams run both, with a public board for general requests and a private one for a specific group. Whichever you choose, keep reasoning that customers should not see, such as effort estimates, account context and the real reason behind a decline, in internal notes rather than in public replies.
In Looph, every post has an internal thread that customers never see, and a post can be moved from a private board to a public one once an embargo lifts; its votes, comments and followers go with it, and internal notes stay visible to staff only. Private boards start on the Starter plan. Private boards and internal feedback covers the setup.
How do voting and statuses work on a feedback board?
Voting counts demand; statuses report what you have decided to do about it. Each person gets one vote per post, so the count reflects people rather than clicks. Boards either allow anonymous votes, which maximise volume, or require sign-in, which attaches an identity to every vote so you can see which accounts asked and weight their votes by plan, revenue or renewal date. Statuses are the public contract with the people who voted. A short, unambiguous set works best, for example Open, Under review, Planned, In progress, Shipped and Declined, and every change should notify voters and followers. That notification is the reason people come back: it is proof that voting did something. Declined with a one-line reason earns more trust than a post left in Open for a year, because the customer can plan around a clear answer. Treat votes as one input to prioritisation, alongside revenue, strategy and effort, rather than as the decision itself.
Votes carry biases worth correcting for; the feature voting guide covers them. In Looph every vote comes from a signed-in account and counts once; weighting by plan or revenue, and voting without an account, are coming soon. Voting and prioritisation covers what you can set today.
How do you moderate a board and handle duplicates?
Catch duplicates before they are posted, merge the ones that get through, and choose a moderation mode that matches your audience. The best duplicate control happens at submission: as someone types a title, similar posts appear underneath and most people vote on the existing one instead. When a copy does slip through, merge it into the canonical post so its votes, comments and followers move across, with each person counted once. Left unmerged, one need posted five ways looks like five minor requests. For moderation, post-moderation publishes immediately and relies on the team to tidy up, which keeps momentum and suits most boards. Pre-moderation holds every submission for review, which suits regulated industries and boards with a large anonymous audience. Rate limits, banned-word lists and link throttling for new accounts handle most spam. For hostile or off-topic posts, hiding one keeps a record without leaving it on public view, and an official reply that adds context usually does more good than editing someone's words.
How Looph handles it
Similar posts surface as a customer types. Merging moves votes, comments and followers to the post you keep and leaves a redirect so old links work; it cannot be undone in the web app, so check which post you are keeping first. Spam is handled with tools you switch on: approval before posts go live, a workspace word list, per-board limits on who can post, Remove as spam and bans. Automatic rate limits are coming soon. See handle duplicates and merge posts and moderation, spam and content controls.
How four feedback tools run their boards
The mechanics vary more than the name suggests. When a customer submits a request, Canny suggests similar existing ones so they can vote on one instead of posting a copy. Productboard's portal skips the upvote: a visitor rates how important an item is, from Critical to Not important, and confirms an email address. Nolt lets you allow anonymous voting, vote on a customer's behalf, or hide the new-suggestion button so people can only vote on what is already there. Frill notifies everyone who voted when an idea moves to Planned or Shipped, by email and in-app.
Those four choices (duplicate prevention, the voting scale, who may post, and how voters hear back) are the decisions worth making deliberately on any board.
When is a feedback board the wrong tool?
A board is the wrong tool when you cannot commit to answering it, or when the feedback you need does not arrive as a request. An unanswered public board is worse than none: it shows every visitor a list of ideas nobody has read. If you have a handful of customers, talking to each of them directly will teach you more than votes will. Security vulnerabilities and bug reports that need logs, account data or reproduction steps belong in a private support or security channel, not on a public page. A board also cannot measure satisfaction, so use a survey or NPS for that, and it cannot hear from people who never visit, such as churned customers and prospects who chose a competitor, so read it alongside lost-deal notes and churn conversations. Finally, a board does not replace product judgement. If the plan is to build whatever has the most votes, the board will reward whoever is best at gathering them.
How do you launch a feedback board?
Launch with a scoped board, a small set of statuses, a seeded list of real requests and a plan to answer quickly for the first few weeks. Scope each board around a decision rather than your org chart: feature requests, bug reports or integrations wanted, with categories for finer cuts. Ask for the minimum on the submission form, because every required field costs you submissions. Seed the board with requests you already have from support and sales, so the first visitor finds something to vote on rather than an empty page. Then put the link where customers already are: inside the product, in onboarding emails, in support macros and in your changelog. Work the board daily for the first two weeks. Early replies and status changes set the expectation that posting is worth the effort, and that expectation is what keeps submissions coming once the novelty wears off.
Start from a recommended setup
Templates are not applied automatically yet; one-click templates are coming soon. The feature request board template is a recommended setup you build by hand and explains the reasoning behind each status, the quickstart walks you through the setup guide, and create and configure a feedback board covers the settings in detail.
A launch checklist
- Name the board after the decision it serves.
- Set a short list of statuses and only the fields you need.
- Choose public or private, and anonymous or signed-in voting.
- Seed it with existing requests and link it from your product.
- Answer every post for the first two weeks.
Running a feedback board in Looph
Looph's feedback boards combine the board with feature voting, a public roadmap built from board statuses, and a changelog that notifies every voter when a linked request ships. Members are free on every plan, so support, sales and success can take part without a seat each; the plans differ in admin seats, boards and tracked voters.
The Free plan includes 1 public feedback board, 100 tracked voters, the public roadmap, the changelog, duplicate merging and moderation, and needs no credit card. Starter, at $19 a month ($190 billed yearly), adds a private board, 1,000 tracked voters, the Jira and GitHub integrations, the API and webhooks, and Zapier and Make connections. Growth, at $59 a month ($590 yearly), adds up to 10 public and 5 private boards, a custom domain and branding removal. Every new workspace can try every Business feature free for 14 days, no credit card required: the owner starts the trial from Billing when the team is ready. The pricing page lists everything in each plan.
Frequently asked questions
Is a feedback board the same as a feature request board?
Mostly. A feature request board is a feedback board scoped to new functionality. Feedback board is the broader term, and it also covers boards for bug reports, integration requests or internal ideas.
Can customers vote without creating an account?
On many tools, yes, if you allow anonymous voting. It increases volume, but you lose the ability to see which accounts voted or to notify them later. Single sign-on from your own app gives you identified votes without asking customers to create another account. In Looph, voting needs an account today, with email or Google sign-in; anonymous voting is coming soon.
How many feedback boards should you have?
One per decision. Start with a single feature request board, then add a separate board only when a different kind of feedback needs a different owner or audience, such as bug reports or a private board for beta testers.
What makes a feedback board fail?
Silence. A board where posts sit in Open with no reply teaches customers that posting is pointless, and submissions dry up. Answer early, use statuses honestly, decline with a reason, and notify voters when their request moves.