Canny charges $79/month — $948 a year — to show your users what you shipped and let them vote on what's next. Shipnotes is the same loop on your own $5 VPS: a Markdown changelog, a Planned / In Progress / Shipped roadmap, anonymous feature voting, email subscribers and an embeddable "What's new" bell, with all of it in one SQLite file you own.
This is the full pricing breakdown: what Canny actually costs over one, two and three years, what Shipnotes gives you for $129 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.
What Canny actually costs you
At $79/mo, one Canny subscription adds up to $948 every year — $2,844 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Shipnotes is $129 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.
| Shipnotes | Canny | |
|---|---|---|
| Sticker price | $129 once | $79/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $129 | $948 |
| Cost after 2 years | $129 | $1,896 |
| Cost after 3 years | $129 | $2,844 |
Three years in, the gap is $2,715 — and every year after that adds another $948 to the subscription side of the ledger.
Shipnotes vs Canny, feature by feature
Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:
| Shipnotes | Canny | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $129 once | $79/month ($948/yr) |
| Cost over 3 years | $129 | ~$2,844 |
| Changelog + roadmap + voting | Yes | Yes |
| Anonymous voting (no signup wall) | Yes | No |
| "What's new" widget | Included | Higher tiers |
| Email notifications | Yes, via your own SMTP | Yes, their sender |
| Your data | One SQLite file on your box | Their cloud |
| Source code | MIT, yours | Closed |
What you get for $129, once
Self-hosted changelog + roadmap + feature voting with email subscribers and an embeddable widget. The highlights:
- 📰 Public changelog — Write posts in Markdown, tag them New / Improved / Fixed, publish with one click. Valid RSS 2.0 feed included.
- 🗺️ Public roadmap board — Planned / In Progress / Shipped columns, sorted by votes, so users can see where things stand.
- 💡 Feature requests + voting — Visitors submit ideas and upvote — one vote per visitor, no account or signup wall — with comment threads.
- 🛡️ Moderation that scales — Approve, decline with a public reason, or merge duplicates — votes carry over and are deduped.
Canny costs $79 every month. Shipnotes pays for itself in about 7 weeks — then your changelog is free for the life of your product.
Switching is 3 steps
- Buy once on Whop. One-time $129 for the packaged version with updates and setup support.
- Deploy it. docker compose up -d on a $5 VPS for a public changelog at updates.yourapp.com — or run desktop mode to try it first.
- Ship, post, let users vote. Write a Markdown post, tag it, publish — subscribers get emailed, the widget badge lights up, and feature requests collect votes while you sleep.
When paying Canny is still the right call
Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Canny's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $79/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
If that's you, Shipnotes is $129, once. For the deeper dive, read the Shipnotes vs Canny head-to-head or the full Canny comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/changelog-roadmap-mvp. $129 buys the packaged version, 1-click setup and updates.
Do voters need accounts?
No — and that's deliberate. Canny puts votes behind a signup wall; Shipnotes uses a per-visitor token (one vote each, repeat votes rejected server-side). Lower friction means you hear from far more of your users.
What doesn't it have vs Canny?
Honestly: no Jira/Slack/Intercom integrations, no user segmentation or revenue-weighted prioritization, no SSO-identified voters. Shipnotes is the core loop — changelog, roadmap, voting, email — done well. If your PM team lives in Canny's integrations, Canny earns its price.
Does the widget slow my site down?
No — it's one small deferred script tag that renders a bell with an unread badge. You can attach it to your own button with data-target and theme it with data-accent.
Do I need a server?
For a public changelog, yes — a $5 VPS with the included Docker setup. Desktop mode runs the identical app locally for evaluation and drafting.
More on Canny pricing
Shipnotes — product page, demo & full feature list · Voicebox vs Canny pricing · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns
Try Shipnotes — $129, once
Self-hosted changelog + roadmap + feature voting with email subscribers and an embeddable widget.