The Society for Corporate Governance survey of 150 companies showed that over 45% of small companies shifted to virtual-only board meetings. Also, over 50% of mid-sized and 38% of large companies combine virtual and in-person meetings.
Corporate and nonprofit boards use boardroom software for meeting management and board communications. However, many face significant challenges while using board portals due to wrong choices that steal millions of hours globally.
At BoardSoftware.net, we help board directors, business owners, and managers select quality board management software. We provide in-depth board software reviews to streamline software selection and help executives make better-informed decisions.
Our review process
At BoardSoftware.net, we aim to provide our readers with the most relevant insights on existing board portals. For this, we follow an extensive multi-step review process.
Thorough due diligence
At this stage, we collect marketing data, user feedback, product information, and other insights on the board software provider under review.
It allows us to check the vendor’s operating history and market position and inspect its overall business health. We take into account the following provider aspects:
- Market dominance, including revenues, years of experience, and applicable industries
- Customer information, including the number of customers, case studies, user reviews from independent platforms, and overall online reputation
- Product information, including product listings, software features, pricing structures, and marketing materials
In-depth software testing
Our quality assurance team extensively tests each board software provider to see how it works from a user perspective. We evaluate board portals to ensure they work as intended and to build our reviews around testing results. We inspect, assess, and rate the following software features:
- Security, including data encryption, user authentication process, user permissions, watermarking, and regulatory compliance
- Customization, including language settings, custom branding, appearance customization, custom reports, and enforceable contracts
- Meeting management tools, including agenda builders, meeting minute recorders, and calendars
- Collaboration tools, including messengers, workflows, notifications, tasks, and action items
- Document management features, including storage capacity, data transfer speed, file-sharing, document structuring, and text search tools
- Customer support aspects, including response time, communication channels, availability, and efficiency
- Reporting and analytics features, including audit trails, board engagement reports, and reports’ depth and customizability
- User interface aspects, including element placement, navigation, ease of use, cross-platform performance, and issues
Our testing methodology
Our team developed a consistent methodology for testing board software applications. We achieve consistent review results by applying our testing methodology to each board software provider.
We evaluate board software features using the following principles:
- Test scripting. Our review methodologists developed testing scripts outlining standardized procedures for our software testers. Our team carefully adheres to testing guidelines for consistent results.
- Direct testing. We conduct performance tests in testing environments, including free trials and test accounts with full access to software features. We contact board software vendors, request documentation, and access their products firsthand.
- User perspective. We evaluate board software from our reader’s perspective as if we were board directors ourselves. Our testing team performs all actions intended for board portal use, including file-sharing, meeting management, e-signatures, and voting.
Provider recommendations
It’s okay to struggle with enterprise software choices, and we can help with the top four board software portals that meet our strictest criteria.
| Provider | Top-notch features | Learn more |
| iDeals Board | – Dynamically updated agendas and meeting minutes – Action items, meeting workflows, voting tools, and customizable audit trail – Eight levels of granular access permissions – ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance – Encrypted document download with remote access controls – In-app live chat support available 24/7, including weekends and holidays | View profile |
| Nasdaq Boardvantage | – Customizable meeting agenda and meeting minutes templates – Boardroom engagement reports – Voting tools – Four levels of user permissions – ISO 27001 and SOC 2 compliance | View profile |
| Diligent Boards | – Digital agendas and meeting minutes – Board productivity analytics – Real-time updates and meeting discussions – Fully-compliant data centers – Four levels of user permissions | View profile |
| BoardEffect | – Document annotations and board book builders – Meeting management workflows with action items – Digital meeting calendars – SOC 2 audited infrastructure – Two levels of user permissions | View profile |
Our team of experts
Our review team includes 20+ experts with years of experience in QA testing, business analytics, and marketing.
We professionally evaluate board portals backed with substantial experience relevant to our readers. Our review methodologists and testers have years of experience in virtual workspaces, virtual data rooms, productivity applications, and board portals.