Top 11 Canny.io Alternatives for SaaS Companies
A Canny.io alternative should be able to help you collect feedback from your users, prioritize that feedback, and share your roadmap and changelog with your customers.
And ideally, such an alternative would cost less too.
In this list, we’ve got many alternatives for you to consider. For each option, we showcase key features and their subscription pricing.
Customer acquisition costs 5 times more than retention on average. So clearly, it’s crucial that you collect user feedback, and implement the right ideas for your strategic vision.
Today’s software customers want to have direct access to the product teams building the software they use. And the easiest way to close the feedback loop is to collect feedback with an idea board. This saves time for everyone involved.
What to look for in a Canny.io alternative
Critics of Canny.io say that the company doesn’t listen to feedback and won’t remove the “powered by Canny.io” link, even on paid plans. So, you might be looking for an alternative with no visible branding.
Or, perhaps you’re looking for something with better UX or a more affordable plan for your needs.
You’ll want to choose something that is designed for SaaS companies (not ecommerce brands or digital publishers).
You should also choose something that fits your budget and your product. Some of the options on this list are geared towards enterprise software companies, while others are the perfect fit for brand new SaaS startups and micro SaaS.
Which Canny.io alternatives are free?
Free customer research tools are hard to find. Saasfe is a free Canny.io alternative. It includes up to 20 ideas on the ideas board at a time. You can have unlimited users and storage, so the only limit is the number of ideas.
However, the free plan doesn’t include the roadmap feature, or the in-app widget for collecting user feedback. Your users will have to go to the board, but you can just link to it from an in-app message or during a 1:1 customer support conversation.
Top Canny.io alternatives
Whether you’re looking for simpler features at lower prices, or a more complex user feedback tool, there’s a tool on this list of alternatives that meets your needs.
1. Saasfe
Saasfe is an easy-to-use customer feedback tool for SaaS companies looking for better UX and pricing than Canny.io. Notoriously, Canny has complicated and frustrating UX. Saasfe was built to solve this problem. It lets your customers add ideas and upvote them so you know what to prioritize.
Features:
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Customer feedback idea board
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Idea upvoting and commenting
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Roadmap for customer viewing and commenting
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Product announcements
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Changelog
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Website widget
Pricing:
Saasfe has a free forever plan, and their Basic Plan is just $25 per month, making it a great alternative to Canny.
2. Hellonext
Hellonext is a feedback management tool that helps you gather and prioritize feature requests. It also has a changelog and feature roadmap.
Features:
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Feedback boards
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Feature roadmap
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Changelog
Pricing:
Hellonext does not have a free plan, but they do have a starter plan which begins at $25 per month.
3. Nolt
Nolt’s primary feature is its feedback boards, which are a collaborative place for user requests. Your users can upvote ideas to help you prioritize what to build.
Features:
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Feedback idea boards
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Roadmap
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Voting
Pricing:
Nolt charges $25 per month per board.
4. ProductBoard
Features:
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Feedback idea boards
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Prioritization analytics
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Roadmaps
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Ability to create different feedback portals for multiple audiences
Pricing:
ProductBoard’s Essentials plan is $20 per user per month, meaning large teams will have a heftier bill. However, with its analytics features, it might be a better fit for enterprise customers anyways.
5. Upvoty
Upvoty is a feedback management tool that helps you get feedback from a board with a custom domain as well as a widget embedded in your product.
Features:
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Feedback boards
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Website widgets
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Roadmap
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Changelog
Pricing:
With their Super Power plan, you can get 5 boards for up to 1,500 customers for $25 per month.
6. Pendo
Pendo is a more robust software compared to some of the other Canny.io alternatives on our list. Not just for feedback, it also helps with onboarding. It includes product analytics, customer sentiment surveys, and in-app walkthroughs for onboarding and feature adoption. In terms of price, you might be better off buying separate feedback and onboarding tools.
Features:
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Product analytics
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Feedback collection
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Roadmaps
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User onboarding via in-app guides and messages
Pricing:
The tool is certainly designed for enterprise companies and does not display pricing on the website, so you can assume that it’s hundreds of dollars per month.
7. UserVoice
UserVoice is a feedback management system for SaaS companies. It allows you to collect feedback from multiple sources. The platform is ideal for large enterprise SaaS companies that want to collect and manage feedback not only from customers but also from their internal teams.
Features:
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Feedback portal
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Ability to collect feedback from Slack, feedback widget, and API
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Feedback analysis
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Roadmap
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Internal status updates
Pricing:
As it’s an enterprise solution, there is no pricing information on their website, so you’ll need to do a demo and talk to someone on their sales team. Typically, this means that the solution will set you back hundreds of dollars per month.
8. Savio
Savio is a tool for tracking feature requests from different sources such as your help desk, team communication tool, and other platforms.
Features:
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Collect feature requests from multiple sources
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Prioritize feature requests
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Email customers who requested features when shipped
Pricing:
On their free plan you can have 1 user and can track feedback from all sources. Or you can sign up for their paid plan which is $25 per month for 3 users.
9. Usersnap
With Usersnap, you can collect customer feedback in the form of screenshot bug reports and experience ratings. The product combines customer-driven QA and customer-driven product design. However, it is more useful for QA than its feedback use case.
Features:
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In-app feature request collection
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Feedback button and menu
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Visual bug ticket screenshots
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Qualitative and quantitative surveys
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Feedback analytics
Pricing:
Usersnap’s most popular plan is $79 per month and it includes up to 10 users, 3 feedback projects, and unlimited customers.
10. Qualaroo
Qualaroo is a platform for user research and customer feedback. The product includes feedback collection for websites and web-based apps, as well as exit surveys. While it can be used by SaaS companies, it’s also a fit for ecommerce brands and marketplaces.
Features:
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Website visitor targeting for feedback requests
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Surveys with 10 question types
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Exit surveys
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UX feedback
Pricing:
Qualaroo charges based on the number of website page views you have. The premium plan costs $0.0016 per pageview per month.
11. UserReport
UserReport is a tool for collecting feedback via surveys and Net Promoter Score. You can use the widget to ask your users anything, not just NPS. The product can be use by SaaS companies but is more so designed for digital publishers.
Features:
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Feedback widget with polls for any questions
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Gauging NPS
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Feedback surveys
Pricing:
UserReport does allow you to sign up for free to start trying it out, but they don’t have a free plan. Their pricing is not publicly available on their website.
Which Canny alternative is right for you?
So now it’s time to choose the feedback tool for your SaaS company. The top features you’ll need are a feedback board to collect ideas, a widget so you can get feedback inside of your web-based app, a roadmap so you can communicate with customers and not have to answer every question one by one, and a changelog so you can show customers exactly what was updated.
With it’s free forever plan, Saasfe is a Canny.io alternative that lets you get started for free and remain on the free plan so long as you curate ideas to stay below the limit. Or you can upgrade and collect unlimited ideas from your users and customers.
