Overview

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Münster, Germany, Echometer is built around ongoing team development rather than retrospectives alone. Its mix of group reflection, health tracking, and 1:1 meeting support can give managers one place for recurring team practices and individual conversations. Teams seeking only a lightweight retro board may not need that breadth.

For more options in the category, see our Retrospective Software guide.

Key features

Retrospectives and follow-through

The retro tool combines more than 50 templates with a shared board, private brainstorming, dot voting, surveys, whiteboards, and action tracking. Private ideation before group discussion and voting can help teams surface and prioritize feedback; action tracking gives those discussions a route to follow-up. Anonymous feedback is supported, and Echometer can be used for online or in-person sessions.

Jira integration lets teams track retrospective action items on Jira boards, a practical fit for teams already managing work there. The broad facilitation toolkit is useful, but the free retro allowance sharply limits how often a team can use it.

Team health and 1:1 meetings

Team dashboards and health trends cover health checks and activity, including cross-team monitoring. That is more suited to managers looking for patterns across teams than to a team wanting only a one-off retrospective.

The 1:1 tool supports agenda and notes management and integrates with the Microsoft calendar. Its free version includes all functions and allows unlimited meetings for a manager with up to two employees, making it a meaningful no-cost option for small reporting groups. Managers with more than two employees need to account for that cap.

Security and deployment

Echometer says it uses TLS encryption and hosts exclusively at Deutsche Telekom in Germany, with a data center certified to ISO 27001 among other certifications. A GDPR data processing agreement is included with each subscription or contract, in the version current when the contract is concluded. The product is browser-based cloud software, with no customer-hosted on-premise option.

Pricing

Echometer is freemium, with a free plan and paid plans from €29/mo (annual). A free trial is also offered.

Starter: 0.00 EUR per free. It covers one team, 25 workspace members, unlimited retro guests, one retrospective per month after the trial period, and an archive of two retros per team. This is enough for an occasional monthly retro, but the cadence and short archive make it restrictive for teams that meet more often or want to revisit older sessions.
Pro: 29.00 EUR per year, billed per team/month with an annual term, or €35 with a monthly term. It adds unlimited retrospectives, workspace members, and archive, plus customizable retros and health checks. This is the sensible step up for teams whose meeting frequency or membership exceeds Starter’s caps.
Business: 49.00 EUR per year, billed per team/month with an annual term, or €60 with a monthly term. It includes Pro, SAML SSO, email domain filters, optional individual contracts, invoice payment, and prioritized support. Those additions make it the more relevant tier for organizations needing these administrative and support provisions; smaller teams may have little reason to pay for them.

Both paid tiers have monthly-term prices as well as lower annual-term prices. The listed annual amounts are billed per team/month with an annual term.

Platforms

Echometer runs in modern browsers and supports Windows, Linux, and macOS on PCs and tablets. It is cloud-only, so organizations requiring software hosted on their own infrastructure should look elsewhere.

Who it's for

Echometer is strongest for agile managers who want retrospectives, team-health monitoring, and 1:1 meeting preparation together. The free 1:1 tier particularly suits managers with no more than two employees, while Starter suits a team that needs only one retro a month and can live with a two-retro archive. Teams with frequent retrospectives, larger membership, or a need for long-term history will find Pro more appropriate.

Support is available by email or from within Echometer. Its customer success team can also help with onboarding and rollout for an additional charge.

Pros and cons

Pros: More than 50 templates and a range of facilitation tools support varied retrospective formats; action tracking and Jira integration help carry decisions into work management.
Pros: Health trends and cross-team monitoring extend the product beyond meeting facilitation, while the 1:1 tool’s unlimited free meetings for up to two employees give small manager groups a complete free option.
Cons: Starter allows just one retro a month and keeps only two per team, so regular sessions quickly require Pro.
Cons: Cloud-only delivery rules out customer-hosted deployments.
Cons: The free 1:1 allowance stops at two employees, limiting its appeal to managers with larger teams.

Alternatives

Choose Neatro if a web-based retro tool with a free allowance for up to 10 members, unlimited retrospectives and radars, and 70+ templates matters more than Echometer’s combined 1:1 and team-health toolkit.

RetroStack is a free alternative available on the web, iOS, Android, and Mac.

ScatterSpoke may suit readers looking for a free web and API offering centered on surveys and signal detection; its free plan includes one seat, unlimited static surveys and responses, and one-time Agent Survey and Ask credit allowances.

FocusRetro is worth considering for a free web-based option with three personal boards per month, core templates, voting, phase timers, and action items, or its $15.00 per month Team plan.

Team O'clock may be a better fit for teams that prefer activity-based pricing: its Growth plan costs $3.00 per month per active member, starts at 10 monthly active members, and includes unlimited activity history and team metrics.

EasyRetro is another freemium, web-based alternative.

FreeRetrospectives is a free web option with retro rooms, live chat, templates, action tracking, exports, AI recaps, health checks, and no per-user pricing.

GoRetro may suit teams seeking unlimited users and boards with Slack integration; its Premium plan is $29.00 USD per month, billed annually.

Verdict

Choose Echometer if you want a single cloud tool for structured retrospectives, cross-team health trends, and 1:1s, especially if the two-employee free 1:1 tier fits. Its facilitation range and broader management scope are the main reasons to choose it; the monthly retro cap on Starter and lack of on-premise hosting are the clearest reasons to look elsewhere.

	Echometer	SmartRetro
Free plan	Yes	No
Free trial	Yes	No
Paid from	€2.42/mo	—
Open source	No	No
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Web, Windows	Web
Free plan	Yes	No
Retro templates	Yes	Yes
Anonymous feedback	Yes	—
Voting	Yes	Yes
Action tracking	Yes	Yes
Delivery modes	both	both
Integrations	Yes	Yes

Echometer vs SmartRetro

Echometer

SmartRetro