Signboard vs Yodeck pricing: $288 vs $129 once

OneTimeSuite Blog · Published 2026-07-21

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 — $129 once, unlimited screens.

This is the full pricing breakdown: what Yodeck actually costs over one, two and three years, what Signboard gives you for $129 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.

What Yodeck actually costs you

Yodeck prices per screen — $8/screen/mo — so the subscription grows with every screen you add. The comparison below uses the catalog's annual figure of $96; the per-screen table underneath shows how the bill scales either way.

Yodeck bills per screen, so the total scales with headcount:

Three years in, the gap is $159 — and every year after that adds another $96 to the subscription side of the ledger.

Signboard vs Yodeck, 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:

What you get for $129, once

Playlists, scheduling, screen health and emergency takeover — any browser is a player, no per-screen rent. The highlights:

• 🗂️ 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.

On a single screen Signboard pays for itself vs Yodeck in about 16 months. On five screens, 3 months — then it's $0 a year, forever.

Switching is 3 steps

1. Buy once on Whop. One-time $129 for the packaged Windows installer plus a guided VPS deploy — lifetime updates, unlimited screens.
2. Open /player on each screen. Any TV browser, Pi or tablet shows a 6-character pairing code. Type it into the dashboard, name the screen, assign a playlist. No app installs, no per-device accounts.
3. Build playlists and schedules. Upload media, drag to reorder, set daypart rules per screen — edits push to players instantly over WebSocket.

When paying Yodeck is still the right call

Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Yodeck'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 $8/screen/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.

If that's you, Signboard is $129, once. For the deeper dive, read the Signboard vs Yodeck head-to-head or the full Yodeck comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — the full source is MIT at github.com/bensblueprints/signboard-mvp. The $129 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.

How does scheduling handle wrong clocks on kiosk devices?
All daypart rules are evaluated server-side in each screen's own IANA timezone — the kiosk's (often drifting, often wrong) hardware clock is never trusted.

Where does Yodeck still win?
Its dedicated player app and managed hardware program are genuinely more turnkey for non-technical multi-site chains, and there's a free single-screen tier. Signboard is for people running 1-10 screens who'd rather own the stack than pay per-screen rent.

More on Yodeck pricing

Signboard — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns