Project and task management decision
Canny
A small team can reproduce the core feedback board, voting, widget, and changelog in ~1 week, but Canny's value relies on Autopilot AI, broad integrations, enterprise features, and scale—difficult to match by DIY.
Visit website↗$79/mo
$948/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$50one-off30 h to build
$50/mo8 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Canny alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Collect customer feedback into boards, let users create/vote/comment on posts, maintain an admin UI to triage and change post status, embed a feedback widget into a website or app, and export reports or send updates (changelog/notifications).
What it still won’t have
- Autopilot AI that automatically captures and deduplicates feedback from support/sales conversations
- Built-in integrations catalogue (Intercom, Zendesk, Gong, Zoom, CRM/PM tools)
- Enterprise features and compliance attestations (SSO, SOC 2, invoicing, high tracked-user limits)
- Scale, polished UX, and brand trust of the hosted product
What remains hard
- Infrastructure at scale
100K+ registered companies
- Compliance and regulation
SOC 2 Pay by invoice Security review
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a lightweight self-hosted feedback board using PostgreSQL, Node.js (Express) backend, React frontend, and a small SMTP/email provider. Implement: (1) Post, Comment, Vote, Board models in Postgres with authentication (email + password). (2) Admin UI to triage posts, set status, and create changelog entries. (3) Public board UI with post creation, voting, and commenting. (4) Embeddable JS widget exposing create/vote actions. (5) Background job to send status update emails and CSV export endpoint. Out of scope: AI autopilot ingestion from external support tools, enterprise SSO, and SOC2 compliance. Include input validation, error handling, tests for API and core UI flows, and docker-compose for local deployment.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 4 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Hard moats found in the evidence-6
- Evidence score61
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 4
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productCanny — product page
- official pricingCanny pricing
- official docsCanny features
- open sourcelogchimp/logchimp
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
