IdeaScale
Idea management software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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Small
Medium
Large
- Education and training
- Public sector and nonprofit organizations
- Arts, entertainment, and recreation
What is IdeaScale
IdeaScale is an idea management platform used to collect, discuss, and prioritize ideas from employees, customers, or partner communities. It supports structured innovation programs such as challenges, suggestion campaigns, and continuous improvement pipelines. The product combines community-style engagement (submissions, voting, commenting) with administrative workflows for moderation, evaluation, and reporting.
Mature community ideation workflows
IdeaScale centers on collecting ideas at scale through configurable communities, challenges, and categories. It supports discussion and feedback loops via commenting, voting, and status updates to keep participants informed. These capabilities fit organizations running repeatable innovation or suggestion programs rather than one-off workshops.
Configurable evaluation and governance
The platform provides tools to moderate submissions, manage duplicates, and move ideas through defined statuses. It supports structured review processes (for example, internal evaluation stages) that help teams govern intake and decision-making. This is useful when multiple stakeholders need consistent criteria and traceability across many submissions.
Reporting for program oversight
IdeaScale includes analytics and reporting features aimed at tracking participation and idea pipeline activity. Program owners can monitor engagement levels and throughput across campaigns and communities. This helps teams compare outcomes across initiatives and communicate progress to leadership.
Less suited to visual collaboration
IdeaScale focuses on idea intake and community discussion rather than real-time visual whiteboarding. Teams that rely heavily on facilitated workshops, canvases, or spatial collaboration may need a separate tool for that part of the process. This can add friction when moving from brainstorming to structured idea submission.
Setup requires program design
To get consistent results, administrators typically need to define campaigns, categories, evaluation steps, and governance rules. Without clear program ownership, communities can accumulate untriaged ideas and inconsistent statuses. Organizations new to innovation program management may face a longer time-to-value.
Product planning depth may be limited
IdeaScale is designed for ideation and prioritization, not as a full product management suite. Teams that need end-to-end roadmapping, detailed requirements management, and delivery tracking may need additional systems. This can create handoffs from selected ideas into downstream product or project tools.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 — Free (up to 100 users) | Official free subscription available for small teams (IdeaScale states free for up to 100 users in blog post); can sign up and upgrade to paid at any time. |
| Paid (Enterprise / Government / Education / Custom) | Contact sales / Custom pricing | IdeaScale publishes custom subscription pricing only; they require you to contact sales/get a demo to receive a quote. Paid plans include advanced features, services, and customization for larger organizations. |
| IdeaScale AI (separate add-on) | Separate subscription (price not published) | IdeaScale AI is offered as a separate subscription and is described on the site as available with a free trial; pricing requires contacting sales or viewing the app. |
Seller details
IdeaScale, Inc.
Berkeley, CA, USA
2008
Private
https://ideascale.com/
https://x.com/ideascale
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ideascale/
