Product teams often default to Atlassian's Jira for roadmapping because their engineering departments already use it. However, according to a comparison published by Aha!, product managers can use dedicated software like Aha! Roadmaps while keeping engineers in Jira. The company outlines how its platform compares to Jira Product Discovery (JPD) combined with Jira for enterprise product management.
About Aha! Roadmaps
Founded in 2013, Aha! is a bootstrapped, independently owned company with over 1 million users and more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Aha! Roadmaps serves as the core of its product development suite, offering tools to set strategy, gather customer feedback through ideas portals, and plan releases. The software includes an AI assistant named Elle, which uses existing product data to advise managers, automate tasks, and build interactive prototypes.
About Jira Product Discovery and Jira
Released by Atlassian in 2023, JPD is a discovery and prioritization tool where teams score ideas and build roadmap views before sending committed work to Jira. According to Aha!, teams using the Atlassian ecosystem for the entire product process will need multiple products: JPD Premium for idea hierarchies, Jira Premium for cross-team planning, and a Marketplace app for a customer-facing ideas portal.
Feature comparison
| Capability | Aha! Roadmaps | Jira Product Discovery + Jira |
| Strategy and prioritization | Define vision, business models, positioning, goals, and initiatives. Prioritize with consistent or custom value scorecards. | JPD connects ideas to goals and prioritizes them with custom fields, formulas, and frameworks such as RICE. Provides less structure for defining product strategy. |
| Customer feedback | Aha! Ideas Essentials is included with every plan, with unlimited ideas portals, users, scorecards, and reporting. | JPD captures customer insights and links them to ideas. External ideas portals require a Marketplace app. |
| Detailed product planning | Define releases, epics, features, and requirements. Sequence work and manage dependencies and risks. | JPD covers prioritized ideas and roadmap views. Committed work goes to Jira, and planning across teams requires Jira Premium. |
| Interactive prototyping | Create interactive prototypes with AI. Save them as records, link them to product work, and gather feedback. | Not included in JPD or Jira. |
| AI for product work | Elle analyzes information, creates and updates records, builds roadmaps and reports, drafts strategy, and creates prototypes. | Atlassian's Rovo drafts and summarizes content in JPD and helps organize incoming feedback into ideas. |
| Portfolio planning | Organize products in a hierarchy and roll strategy up to the company level. Coordinate dependencies across products and teams. | JPD Premium adds multilevel hierarchies and roadmaps across projects. Delivery planning across teams happens in Jira Premium. |
| Reporting and roadmap views | Build roadmaps, custom reports, charts, pivots, and dashboards. Share through presentations and secure webpages. | JPD offers roadmap, timeline, matrix, and hierarchy views, plus published views for stakeholders. Delivery reporting happens in Jira. |
| Engineering connection | Use Aha! Develop, or integrate with Jira, Azure DevOps, and more than 40 other tools. | JPD ideas link natively to Jira work items. |
| Support | Support from former product managers on every plan, with responses in less than two hours. Enterprise+ adds concierge service. | Support varies by plan: business hours on Standard, 24/7 for critical issues on Premium, and 24/7 on Enterprise. Free plans rely on community support. |
Key differences in strategy and planning
Product strategy and customer feedback
Aha! states that its software provides built-in tools to define vision, business models, and initiatives across the product hierarchy, with features linking directly to that strategy. In contrast, JPD connects ideas to Atlassian Goals and uses frameworks like RICE for scoring, which Aha! claims provides less structure for defining the strategy itself. For customer feedback, Aha! Roadmaps includes Aha! Ideas Essentials with unlimited portals, whereas JPD requires a separate Marketplace app or feedback tool for public submissions.
Product planning and AI
Aha! Roadmaps handles detailed planning and cross-team coordination in one system, while the Atlassian approach divides this between JPD for ideas and Jira Premium for cross-team delivery. Both platforms offer AI assistants: Elle in Aha! can create interactive prototypes and draft strategy, while Atlassian's Rovo drafts content and organizes incoming feedback. Neither JPD nor Jira includes built-in interactive prototyping.
Pricing and integration
| Pricing factor | Aha! Roadmaps | Jira Product Discovery + Jira |
| Starting price | Starts at $59 per user / month | JPD is free for up to three creators; paid plans start at $10 per creator / month. Jira is free for up to 10 users; Standard is approx. $8 per user / month. |
| Pricing model | Per user: Premium ($59), Enterprise ($99), and Enterprise+ ($149) per user / month. | Priced separately. JPD: Standard ($10), Premium ($25). Jira: Standard ($7.91), Premium ($14.54). |
| Free users | Unlimited free reviewers and viewers on Enterprise and Enterprise+. | Unlimited free JPD contributors. |
| AI | Elle is included in every plan. | Rovo is included in the JPD Standard plan. |
| Customer feedback and prototyping | Ideas portals and interactive prototyping included in every plan. | Customer-facing ideas portal requires a Marketplace app at additional cost; prototyping not available. |
Aha! Roadmaps includes AI, whiteboards, and prototyping in every plan. Aha! notes that while JPD starts at a lower price, costs increase when adding idea hierarchies, cross-team delivery planning, and external portals. For teams already using Jira, Aha! Roadmaps offers a two-way integration with real-time updates and custom field mappings. New records and changes sync in both directions, allowing engineering teams to continue working in Jira without migrating their backlog.
Choosing the right software
According to Aha!, its software suits teams wanting strategy, feedback, prioritization, and detailed planning in a single system with built-in portals and AI prototyping. JPD and Jira are recommended for organizations standardized on Atlassian that prefer using separate products for discovery, planning, and delivery, and whose strategy is defined elsewhere.
This article was written by AI from reporting by aha.io.
