LaunchDarkly

What do you like best about the product?

I am almost a daily user and it's definitely a critical tool at this point; it's the second company I work at that uses LaunchDarkly.

It's a very flexible and user-friendly tool (when setup correctly).
The setup is quite straightforward, but also depends on the time and ambition we, users, devote to it.

I also appreciate some of the simpler integrations like Slack which make a feature flag link appear as a rich content, giving context on the flag. Saves us a lot of back and forth just by having that auto-populated in slack conversations.

What do you dislike about the product?

It can get expensive, specially when we talk about individual licenses, and the lower tiers have a lot of limitations that can make controlled rollouts / betas a bit painful.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are able to continuously deliver product to production and still decide when to enable it/sync with Marketing etc. We are also able to elegantly control betas/canary releases, gather feedback, and rollback quickly if the feedback is not as expected.

What do you like best about the product?

What I like best about LaunchDarkly is how it makes managing features simple and safe. It lets us test new features with a small group of users before a full release, which helps catch issues early. If something goes wrong, we can quickly turn off or roll back features without needing to redeploy the app. The ability to enable or disable modules for specific users gives us great control and flexibility and implementation and integration through SDK is really easy. I had really good experiance with React native SDK.

Another great feature is its multi-environment support. We can manage feature flags separately across different environments like development, staging, and production. This means we can safely test changes in non-production environments without affecting real users and then easily promote features to production when ready.

Overall, LaunchDarkly helps us deliver updates smoothly and improves the experience for our users.

What do you dislike about the product?

There are a few things that can be challenging. The cost can add up quickly, especially if you have many feature flags or multiple environments. Managing a large number of flags in the dashboard can sometimes feel a bit clunky and overwhelming, with limited bulk-edit options. Also, the permission system could be more flexible for larger teams. For new users, setting up and learning the platform can take some time because of its complexity.

Overall, these points are manageable, but they can require extra effort when scaling or onboarding new team members.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Before using LaunchDarkly, we often faced challenges with releasing new features safely and handling critical issues quickly. If a bug was found after deployment, rolling back a feature was complicated and caused disruption for the users. We also struggled to enable or disable specific modules dynamically, and conducting A/B testing was cumbersome and risky without affecting the entire user base.

With LaunchDarkly, everything changed for the better. We now use it to enforce in-app forced updates to make sure users are always on the latest, safest version. When a critical problem arises, we can roll back an entire feature instantly, avoiding customer impact and downtime. The ability to enable or disable modules on demand has given us the flexibility to respond quickly to changing requirements and optimize our app’s performance. Our A/B testing process has become more reliable and controlled, allowing us to make data-driven decisions without interrupting the user experience.

Thanks to LaunchDarkly, we deliver software updates smoothly, reduce risks on releases, and maintain a high-quality experience for our users even when facing critical issues. It has become an essential part of our development and release workflow.

What do you like best about the product?

I find LaunchDarkly incredibly efficient and easy to use. The online tutorials and YouTube videos made it easy to start using the platform. Managing feature flags has streamlined the user experience across our diverse customer base, easily enabling various tools and experiences.

What do you dislike about the product?

Sometimes when the launch has downtime, the feature flags are not working.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use the product to manage feature flags, enhancing user experience across various customers with incredible efficiency and ease.

What do you like best about the product?

What I value most about LaunchDarkly is how it provides a single, unified platform that makes our entire product lifecycle more efficient and data-driven. It’s an indispensable tool for every role I've held. For me, the ease of implementation is what makes all of this possible. Getting it set up was straightforward, and it immediately provided value by separating code deployment from feature release.

From a Product Manager's standpoint, the ease of use and the sheer number of features are huge wins. The user interface is so intuitive that anyone on the team can set up a feature flag, manage a rollout, or even run an A/B test without needing to be an engineer. This empowers me to move faster on product decisions and enables a true culture of experimentation.

As a Data Analyst, the ease of integration is key, as LaunchDarkly's data export capabilities allow me to stream real-time feature flag events directly into our data warehouse. This gives me a rich, contextual dataset to analyze feature performance and user behavior with incredible granularity. Ease of implementation to such flags/features to branch out and connect to platforms

And as a former Client Support professional, what stands out is the combination of ease of use and customer support. If a customer has a unique issue with a feature, I can use the same intuitive interface to turn that feature off for their account instantly. On the rare occasion we hit a technical roadblock, their documentation is comprehensive, and their support team is always responsive and helpful.

It's not a tool we use once a month; its sheer frequency of use makes it a daily part of our workflow, from development to deployment to analysis. LaunchDarkly has become the single source of truth for our feature releases, and that's a level of control and insight that's hard to imagine operating without.

What do you dislike about the product?

t's interesting to consider what might be a "dislike" about LaunchDarkly, though from my experience, it's less about disliking a feature and more about what the tool is—and isn't—built for. It's so good at what it does that any perceived "dislike" is really just a matter of perspective or a limitation of a specific use case, not a flaw in the product itself.

For instance, some teams might initially find the pricing model to be a dislike, but that's often a misunderstanding. The value you get from preventing outages, running successful experiments, and enabling a safer, faster release process far outweighs the cost. It's a strategic investment that pays for itself by reducing risk and accelerating innovation.

Others might say that managing a high number of feature flags can become complex, especially for large, fast-moving teams. But this isn't a flaw with LaunchDarkly; it's a symptom of a larger process problem. LaunchDarkly provides the tools to manage that complexity—like standardized naming conventions, tagging, and descriptions—which actually forces a team to be more disciplined and organized. The tool itself encourages better habits, which is a good thing in the long run.

Ultimately, my experience with LaunchDarkly is that it does exactly what it's supposed to do, and it does it exceptionally well. Any "dislike" is usually an opportunity to better understand the tool's capabilities or to improve our own internal processes.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

"The primary problem LaunchDarkly solves is decoupling the release of code from the deployment of features. In our work with the Aetion Evidence Platform, this has provided a profound benefit, particularly given the rigorous, evidence-based nature of our product.

The core problem: Without LaunchDarkly, releasing a new feature or making a change means we have to go through a full code deployment. In a highly regulated space like real-world evidence (RWE) analytics, this process is complex, time-consuming, and high-risk. Every new build requires extensive validation and can't be done on a whim. This creates a bottleneck, slowing down our ability to innovate and respond to customer needs.

How LaunchDarkly solves it and benefits us:

Mitigating Risk in a Regulated Environment: The Aetion Evidence Platform is used to generate critical real-world evidence for life sciences and biopharma. Errors are not an option. LaunchDarkly allows us to wrap new functionality in a feature flag, deploy the code to our production environment, and keep it dormant. When we are ready, we can turn it on for a single client or a small cohort, get a full validation cycle on real data, and then roll it out progressively. This 'kill switch' capability is a massive safety net; if an issue arises, we can turn off a feature in seconds, without a new code rollback, minimizing any potential impact on our customers' critical analyses.

Accelerating Innovation with Controlled Experimentation: Our clients and partners in the life sciences industry are constantly looking for faster ways to answer complex questions about therapeutic value. LaunchDarkly enables us to safely test new analytical methods or user interface improvements directly in the Aetion Evidence Platform. We can create an experiment, expose a new visualization or workflow to a specific group of users, and measure its impact. This allows us to make data-driven decisions on what features to build and scale, ensuring we are delivering what our users truly need and that new features are valuable and validated.

Empowering Non-Technical Teams: The ability to manage a feature's lifecycle through a simple UI empowers our product and client support teams. They can grant a client early access to a new reporting tool, enable a pilot for a specific study, or troubleshoot an issue by toggling off a feature for a single user. This drastically reduces the dependency on engineering resources for routine tasks, freeing up our developers to focus on building new, impactful capabilities for the Aetion Evidence Platform.

What do you like best about the product?

I appreciate how LaunchDarkly's feature flags make it easy to manage feature releases. In cases where a solution needs modifications post-production, I can simply turn off the feature flag, apply changes in a lower environment, and redeploy without hassle. This ease of toggling features is a significant advantage.

What do you dislike about the product?

I find setting up LaunchDarkly initially challenging, especially when working on a back-end application using Node.js. There were environment-specific configuration issues, and there were no clear instructions on how to handle them. I had to rely on a colleague's configuration to resolve my issue. Additionally, the support provided wasn't very effective, as their suggested solutions didn't work. I also notice a lack of tutorials or videos that provide step-by-step instructions on how to use specific versions of the library, which would be beneficial for users like me.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

LaunchDarkly's feature flags allow me to easily disable and modify features after production release, avoiding code reversion and easing deployments. It's beneficial for handling production changes smoothly.