Canny Alternative for Feature Request Tracking: When You Just Need a Voting Board

Most indie developers building SaaS products hit the same point: users start emailing you feature requests, you lose track of them, and you end up building the wrong thing. The obvious solution is a voting board where users can submit ideas and upvote what they want most. Canny is the best-known tool for this. But when you look at the real cost, it's often overkill.

Canny's Pro plan runs $79/month, billed yearly. Their Core plan is $19/month for up to 100 tracked users. The catch is that "tracked users" counts everyone who interacts with your feedback board, meaning as your user base grows, your bill grows with it. One analysis found that teams with 1,000 tracked users can pay upwards of $661/month on Canny. For an indie dev with a growing product, that's a significant line item.

The irony is that the thing most indie developers actually want is simple: a public board where users can post feature requests and vote on them. That's it. Not roadmap automation, not changelog publishing with advanced segmentation, not enterprise SSO. Just a voting board.

Why Canny's Pricing Model Gets Complicated

Canny switched to a per-tracked-user model in 2025, which makes sense for their enterprise customers but creates real unpredictability for smaller products. If you launch a product, get some press coverage, and 500 users suddenly hit your feedback board, your Canny bill just jumped.

The per-tracked-user model also creates a weird incentive. You might actually want to discourage users from engaging with your feedback board to keep costs down. That's the opposite of what a feedback tool should do.

For context, tools like Frill, Upvoty, and a handful of smaller alternatives have built entire businesses on the premise that most SaaS products don't need what Canny offers. They charge flat rates in the $25-$49/month range and get the basics right.

The Real Market Here

Feature request voting boards are genuinely useful. Products that systematically collect and prioritize user feedback build better roadmaps. The problem isn't that Canny is bad, it's that it's priced and positioned for teams at a certain stage and many indie developers reach for it before they actually need that level of sophistication.

There's a clear segment of the market that wants something in between "a shared Google Doc of feature requests" and a full Canny setup. They want:

• A public or private voting board
• Email notifications when their request gets traction
• A simple way for the founder to comment and update status
• Flat, predictable monthly pricing

That's the gap. We looked at several tools competing in this space and found pricing ranging from free with limits to over $100/month. Some of them are genuinely good and way cheaper than Canny. The breakdown of which alternatives actually deliver and where the market opportunity is for a new entrant, that's all in the report.

Should You Build in This Space?

Feature request tools have a specific dynamic: the market is crowded at the top (Canny, Productboard) and at the bottom (open source tools, janky free tiers), but there's a real middle that's underserved. Indie developers who are charging $29-$99/month for their SaaS need a feedback tool that costs, say, $15/month flat. Not one where the bill surprises them every month.

The opportunity isn't to beat Canny at what Canny does. It's to serve the customers Canny's pricing has pushed out.

If you're looking to build in this space, we researched the full opportunity, including competitive analysis, what features actually matter to this segment, and what a lean MVP could look like. Check out the full feature request voting board report here.