Yodeck charges $8 per screen per month. ScreenCloud is $20+, OptiSigns $10. Run five screens and you're paying $480–$1,200 a year, forever, for what is at its core a scheduled slideshow with a health dashboard. Signboard is the self-hosted version: pair any browser with a 6-character code, build playlists, schedule by time of day, watch every screen's health — $49 once, unlimited screens.
If you've searched for a Yodeck alternative, Signboard is the pay-once option worth putting at the top of the list: Signboard is $49, one time, and covers the same core job Yodeck charges $8/screen/mo for.
What makes Signboard the pick for 2026
- Content library — Images, videos (mp4/webm), web-page URLs, and announcement slides built from 5 layout templates — a "Closed Friday" slide takes 20 seconds, no designer required.
- Playlists — Ordered items with per-entry duration overrides, drag-to-reorder, cut/fade transitions, in-browser preview.
- 6-character pairing — The player page shows a code; type it into the dashboard, name the screen, assign a playlist. Any smart-TV browser, a Pi in kiosk Chromium, or an old tablet all work — no player app.
- Server-side dayparting — "Mon-Fri 07:00-11:00 → Breakfast Menu" — evaluated in the screen's own IANA timezone, not the kiosk's often-wrong clock. Priority-ordered rules, visual weekly grid.
- Screen health dashboard — Live grid: online/offline, last-seen, currently-playing item, reported resolution, player version.
Signboard vs Yodeck, at a glance
| Signboard | Yodeck | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 once, unlimited screens | $8/screen/mo ($96/yr per screen) |
| 5-screen annual cost | $0 after purchase | $480/yr |
| Cost over 3 years (5 screens) | $49 | $1,440 |
| Player | Any browser, 6-char pairing code | Dedicated player app |
| Dayparting | Server-side, per-screen timezone | Yes |
| Emergency takeover | Built in | Paid tier |
| Your data | Your SQLite file, your box | Their servers |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
On a single screen Signboard pays for itself vs Yodeck in about 6 months. On five screens, 5 weeks — then it's $0 a year, forever.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — the full source is MIT at github.com/bensblueprints/signboard-mvp. The $49 buys the packaged installer, guided VPS deploy and lifetime updates instead of doing the docker compose setup yourself.
What hardware do the screens need?
Anything with a browser: a smart TV's built-in browser, a $35 Raspberry Pi in kiosk Chromium, an old Fire tablet. The player is plain ES2017-safe JavaScript built for ancient smart-TV browsers, with double-buffered swaps to avoid flicker.
Does offline caching always work?
Honest caveat: browsers only allow service workers on HTTPS or localhost. On a plain-http LAN address the player degrades gracefully to no-cache mode — it still plays fine, it just re-fetches media each loop. For real offline resilience put a reverse proxy with TLS (or Tailscale) in front, or run the desktop app, which loads 127.0.0.1 and gets full caching.
The bottom line
Signboard won't out-feature Yodeck on every axis — no subscription tool with a bigger team and a bigger roadmap loses on everything. But for the core job, $49 once against $8/screen/mo forever is a trade most people should at least look at. Signboard is part of OneTimeSuite, a catalog of pay-once apps that replace subscription SaaS.
Try Signboard — $49, once
Playlists, scheduling, screen health and emergency takeover — any browser is a player, no per-screen rent.