The best self-hosted feedback boards in 2026 — open source and owned
An honest field guide to self-hosted Canny alternatives: the open-source boards reviewed on their real strengths, and where a paid, owned tool fits.
A public feedback board — users post ideas, vote, watch a roadmap — is one of the highest-leverage things you can bolt onto a product. The hosted leader meters you per tracked voter (the Canny teardown runs those numbers). Here is the honest self-hosted field, free options first.
The open-source options
- Fider — the best-known open-source feedback board: posts, votes, comments, a clean look, Docker deployment. The trade-off: it is the board only — no roadmap view or changelog — and self-hosting means running its Go/Postgres stack.
- Astuto — archived; link removed on 5 September 2026. An open-source feedback tool with boards and a roadmap view, Rails-based. Its repository is archived (AGPL-3.0, last commit 9 January 2026, github.com/astuto/astuto) and
astuto.ionow redirects to an unrelated betting site, so the old link is removed rather than left live. It is not, as this page previously said, actively developed.
One of those two is genuinely usable, and unit-level honesty means saying which. Fider is: free under AGPL-3.0 — verified 5 September 2026 at the project repository, which is active rather than archived, since the site itself names no licence — with a hosted free plan carrying a fair-use limit of 250 feedback items and a Pro plan at $25. Astuto is not, any more. If the board alone covers you and Docker ops are comfortable, Fider is the strong free answer here — and it is now the only one.
Where a paid, owned tool fits
Votera is our commercial entry ($59 one-time, full PHP source): the board, the public roadmap, and the changelog in one app — votes enforced one-per-person at the database level, staff replies and internal notes, an embeddable widget, CSV export — on plain PHP + MySQL/SQLite that runs on ordinary shared hosting with a 2-minute installer, no Docker required. You would pick it over the free boards for the roadmap+changelog completeness and the shared-hosting deployment. Proof it is real software: drive the live demo yourself. Running your own public roadmap is the set-up guide.
Try the Votera demo ↗Live, on sample data, no sign-up.
The honest chooser
- Board only, comfortable with Docker, want free: Fider.
- Board + roadmap, comfortable with Rails: there is no longer a maintained free answer to recommend here. Astuto filled this line until its repository was archived in January 2026; running an archived Rails app is a decision to make knowingly, not a recommendation we will keep making.
- Board + roadmap + changelog on ordinary PHP hosting, bought once: Votera.
- Zero ops, budget for a per-voter meter: the hosted tools — with the pricing caveat in full view first.
Either way, your users' emails and your roadmap live in your database. For a feedback tool — the place customers tell you what is wrong — that is worth more than usual.
Every vendor figure in this category also lives in the Price Observatory — verified, dated, and source-linked, free to cite — and the calculator turns those figures into your own three-year number in ten seconds. Selected apps can also be hosted for you on Ownware Cloud — the honest trade-off guide covers when that's worth it.