FocusRetro vs SmartRetro

FocusRetro is a web-based retrospective tool for agile, remote, and hybrid teams. Boards organize feedback, blind voting, timers, and action items; phase locks, topic grouping, and moderation controls help structure a session. Templates include Went Well / To Improve / Action Items, Mad Sad Glad, Start-Stop-Continue, 4Ls, and a blank board. Action items can have an owner, due date, and status, then return at the start of the next retrospective. FocusRetro lists Jira and Slack integrations. Guests can join a board through an invite link to contribute feedback, vote, and access action items without an account. The free Starter plan costs nothing and includes three personal boards per month, core templates, voting, reactions, phase timers, and action items. The Team plan costs $15 a month and includes one shared workspace, unlimited boards and members, and private or restricted boards with passwords. Business has custom annual billing, with no price listed. Browser traffic is encrypted with TLS; integration tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. FocusRetro says health-check answers are stored as anonymous aggregates and that it does not yet hold SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certifications.

SmartRetro is a web-based retrospective tool for product and engineering teams, aimed at engineering groups at AI-adopting companies. It offers formats such as Start / Stop / Continue and Glad / Sad / Mad, with card grouping and voting. The product says it detects themes that recur across retrospectives to preserve team memory. Action items can be assigned an owner and status, and unfinished work returns automatically in the next retro. The site names Slack, GitHub, and Linear as sources for signals; paid plans list Slack and Linear exports for action items. AI clustering and summaries require a customer-provided LLM key, and the customer pays the model provider separately. SmartRetro says its integrations do not store source code or read direct messages, and organization-scoped data is encrypted in transit and at rest. The product is in closed beta, with beta access free. The Free plan permits one active team, three retros monthly, three members, 30-day retention, and five action items per team. Team is $49 a month billed annually; Pro is $99 a month billed annually.