🚢 Shipnotes
Changelog, public roadmap and feature-request voting — self-hosted, one-time price.
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.
Shipnotes, as it actually looks — a real screenshot, not a mockup.
Features
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.
Email subscribers
Bring your own SMTP; publishing a post emails every subscriber with one-click unsubscribe.
Embeddable "What's new" widget
One script tag adds a bell with an unread badge and a dropdown of your latest posts to any site.
Fast admin dashboard
Dark, keyboard-friendly — posts, requests, subscribers and settings in one place.
One SQLite file
Trivial backups, no external services, zero telemetry.
Shipnotes vs Canny
Canny at $79/mo runs roughly $948/year — $1,896 over two years. Shipnotes is $49, once.
| 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 |
Canny costs $79 every month. Shipnotes pays for itself in 19 days — then your changelog is free for the life of your product.
Three steps, no subscription
Buy once on Whop
One-time $49 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.
Honest answers
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/changelog-roadmap. $49 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.
Deep-dive comparisons:
Own Shipnotes forever
$49 once. Deploy on your own server — your data never leaves it. No renewal, no account with us, no meter. Or build it yourself from the MIT source — it's the same app.