OneTimeEvery screen you own, one price, forever. Self-hosted digital signage.
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.
Signboard in 60 seconds
Everything in the box
Playlists, scheduling, screen health and emergency takeover — any browser is a player, no per-screen rent.
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.
Live updates
Playlist and schedule edits push to affected players instantly over WebSocket, with a 60s poll fallback.
Offline caching
A service worker pre-caches the current playlist's media, so a dropped connection mid-loop doesn't blank the screen — and evicts stale media so a Pi's SD card doesn't fill up.
Emergency takeover
Push one slide to every paired screen instantly; clear it with one click.
Signboard vs Yodeck
Yodeck charges $8/screen/mo. Here's what actually differs.
| Signboard | Yodeck | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $129 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) | $129 | $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 16 months. On five screens, 3 months — then it's $0 a year, forever.
Pick how you pay
Subscriptions if you want them — but the whole point is the lifetime tier.
Up and running in three steps
Buy once on Whop
One-time $129 for the packaged Windows installer plus a guided VPS deploy — lifetime updates, unlimited screens.
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.
Build playlists and schedules
Upload media, drag to reorder, set daypart rules per screen — edits push to players instantly over WebSocket.
Fair 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.
Related tools
More pay-once apps from the OneTimeSuite catalog.
Self-hosted rank tracking. Unlimited keywords, your own SERP API key, $99 once.
Self-hosted threaded comments for any site. One script tag, one SQLite file, $69 once.
Business expense tracking with local receipt OCR. Your data, your one-time price.
Prove the route was actually walked — not just driven.
More about Signboard
Every page we publish about this app — comparisons, personas, platforms and the problems it solves.
App profile
Stop renting. Own Signboard.
Playlists, scheduling, screen health and emergency takeover — any browser is a player, no per-screen rent.
Get Signboard — $129 forever