Bellnote vs Canny
The Canny alternative that won't auto-upgrade your bill
Canny is a feedback board first — changelogs are an add-on to a tool built for feature voting. If you just want to tell users what you shipped, you’re paying for a feedback suite and getting billed on "tracked users": $79/mo becomes $529/mo automatically when you cross 1,000. Canny has repriced four times, killed its $19 plan within a year, and holds a 3.1 on Trustpilot.
Bellnote is purpose-built for release communication: drafts from your GitHub merges, published to widget, page, email, and Slack in one click — no feedback-board bloat, no tracked-user meter, and email notifications that don’t force your subscribers to create a Bellnote account.
Side by side
| Bellnote | Canny | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing trigger | None — flat $9/mo Starter, $19/mo Pro, unlimited readers | Auto-upgrade $79 → $529/mo at 1,000 tracked users |
| Price history | Grandfathered forever — your price never changes, in writing | Four repricings; the $19 plan was killed within a year |
| Email notifications | Included on paid plans — subscribers just confirm their email | $79/mo tier — and subscribers must create a Canny account |
| What the product is | A changelog pipeline: draft → approve → publish everywhere | A feedback board; changelog is an add-on |
| Drafting from GitHub | Built in — drafts appear on merge, approve in 30 seconds | Not offered — entries are hand-written |
| Trust signal | Dogfooded publicly — our own changelog runs on Bellnote | 3.1 on Trustpilot |
Competitor facts as documented in Bellnote's competitive research (G2/Capterra/Reddit complaint teardown, including a May 2026 G2 quote: 'we have had to move over several tiers because they have weird pricing'). Trustpilot rating 3.1 at research time.
Bring your Canny history with you
Upload your Canny CSV or JSON export, confirm the auto-detected field mapping in a preview table, and your entries import as published posts with original dates preserved. Free migration, re-runnable without duplicates — and if you'd rather not lift a finger, send us the export and we'll move you within 24 hours.
Nothing gated
On Bellnote's paid plans the essentials are included — not parked behind a $339 CSS tier, a $100 white-label add-on, or a $79 email gate. Widget customization is on every plan, including Free.
- Email notifications to subscribers
- Slack publishing
- Custom CSS (allowlisted)
- White-label widget
- Custom domain
- Per-post analytics
Your price never changes.
Bellnote is $9/mo Starter or $19/mo Pro — flat, unmetered, and grandfathered forever. The promise is public: your price never changes, in writing, on our pricing page. No MAU meter, no tracked users, no repricings.
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