Sideways 6 alternative with published plans and AI idea scoring

Brainstormer puts the AI on the review side. You describe the company, set 3 to 6 strategic goals and open a challenge such as "Which handoff between sales and operations costs us the most time?" Employees submit a sentence or two. AI expands each idea into a problem, a proposed solution, a first step and a success measure, so reviewers compare complete proposals instead of one liners.

Every idea is scored on impact, cost, risk and strategic fit against your goals, with a short written rationale your reviewers can accept or overrule. On Business and Enterprise the goals carry weights, so a company that cares twice as much about margin as about speed sees that in the ranking. Duplicates are merged with all authors and votes kept, ideas are grouped into themes, and each idea moves through seven decision stages with who, when and why recorded.

When the challenge closes, the board report lists the ranked shortlist, the themes, how many ideas reached each stage and a recommendation. That is the document an operations or HR lead takes to the leadership meeting. See it in practice as an employee suggestion program or a time boxed innovation challenge.

Be honest about the requirement before you switch. If employees must submit ideas without leaving the Teams client, Sideways 6 is built for exactly that and Brainstormer is not a Teams app. The same goes for Viva Engage and Slack. If you already run the Interact intranet, an ideas module from the same vendor is the simpler purchase.

Small teams can also come out cheaper on per user pricing. At the Lite price Sideways 6 shows on its homepage, 20 users cost about $60 a month, well below the Brainstormer Team plan at $149 a month billed yearly. Brainstormer also has no single sign on, no API and no anonymous submissions. If any of those is a hard requirement, stay with a platform that offers it.

Sideways 6 shows two messages on its own site. The homepage advertises Lite, its ideas app for Microsoft Teams, as free for up to 10 users and $3 per user a month for up to 500 users. The pricing page says pricing is tailored and asks you to set up a meeting. Treat the Lite figure as the entry price for the Teams app and expect a quote for the full platform.

Brainstormer prices per company, not per user. Team is $149 a month billed yearly ($1,788 a year) for up to 25 members and 3 open challenges. Business is $399 a month billed yearly ($4,788 a year) for up to 150 members with unlimited challenges, weighted goals, the board report, the admin role and the decision trail CSV. Enterprise is $999 a month billed yearly ($11,988 a year) for up to 1,000 members with full workspace export and priority email support. Month to month costs twice as much.

The crossover is easy to work out. At $3 a user, 150 people cost $450 a month, already above Business at $399. At 500 people the per user bill is $1,500 a month against Enterprise at $999. Below about 50 people per user pricing usually wins. Compare the full plans on the pricing page or read how the category prices in idea management software pricing.

Brainstormer does not import ideas from other tools, so plan the move as a clean start rather than a migration. Export what you have from the old platform and keep it as an archive. Pick the three or four open ideas leadership still cares about and enter them as the first ideas of a new challenge, so their authors see them carried forward.

Then set your goals, write one narrow challenge question with a deadline two to three weeks out, and invite people by email. You can have the first challenge open the same week you sign up. If your program was built on the Microsoft Employee Ideas template rather than Sideways 6, the Employee Ideas app alternative page covers that route.