Shipnotes and Canny solve the same problem from opposite directions: one is source-available software you can own outright for $49, the other is a subscription at $79/mo run entirely on someone else's servers.
Head to head
| Shipnotes | Canny | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 once | $79/month ($948/yr) |
| Cost over 3 years | $49 | ~$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 Shipnotes does well
- 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.
What Canny still does better
There's a real reason Canny costs what it does: a bigger team, broader integrations and dedicated support behind it. If that ecosystem is genuinely what you need, it's worth paying for.
Which one should you pick
If your workflow depends on Canny's specific integrations or you'd rather not run anything yourself, stay put — that's a legitimate call. If you're comfortable owning the tool and want to stop paying $79/mo for a job your own hardware can do, Shipnotes pays for itself and then some: canny costs $79 every month. Shipnotes pays for itself in 19 days — then your changelog is free for the life of your product.
Try Shipnotes — $49, once
Self-hosted changelog + roadmap + feature voting with email subscribers and an embeddable widget.