ProdCamp: A Superior Alternative to Canny.io - Detailed Comparative Review

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Let’s guess. You’ve either been using Canny.io and you’re not satisfied with it 😕

…or, you’re searching for a user feedback tool, you’ve heard of Canny, and you’re wondering if the alternatives are any better 🤔

If so, you’re in the right place! 🙂

We’ve compared Canny with all the major customer feedback tools on the market you’re probably evaluating and given you the pros and cons of Canny vs each of them. 

But before we dive in, there are three things you need to consider when looking for good alternatives to Canny.io:

#1 Canny.io Pricing - How many users do you have? 

Because Canny.io considers tracked users as part of their pricing model, it can be quite expensive in comparison to other feedback tools.

So what exactly are tracked users? Tracked users refer to the number of users upvoting features on your public roadmap or sharing suggestions with you. The more users you have, the more you will pay, which makes the bill both high and unpredictable. Especially if you operate a business with a freemium model.

Updated on March 2022: Canny does not count tracked users anymore. From now on, they do it per admin (which is called owner/manager).
And the prices went up quite a bit showing their transition upmarket.

#2 Canny.io Workflow - How do you want to collect feedback? 

Canny.io roadmap is the only way you can get feature suggestions or upvotes (whether it's a public or a private board). For instance, you can’t set up a simple in-app feedback form widget or an NPS banner to collect feedback directly within your website or your app.

In fact, you might say Canny.io pushes your users to enter the ‘solution space’, while you want them to stay in the ‘problem space’ and let you figure out the solutions. Unless you want to build faster horses, instead of inventing the car, you shouldn’t expect customers to become product managers. And this is what Canny effectively does.

If you’re interested in learning about this concept, MindTheProduct put together a great article about mastering the problem space. 

#3 Canny.io Analytics - How do you want to prioritize based on feedback?

With Canny.io, analyzing feedback can quickly become tricky. 

On top of having only one type of prioritization framework available, customers can submit feature ideas multiple times on your roadmap. And you will need to use tools to monitor, moderate, and merge these different items.

The real nightmare starts when duplicated feedback stays “on air” and your customers keep voting for them under different labels, making it nearly impossible to figure out trends.

Another drawback is you can’t manually import, set up or modify customer data – you can only collect it using one of their integrations.

And this isn’t just a detail, since identifying who gives feedback is a critical aspect of a solid prioritization strategy.

All this makes it much harder to prioritize and inform your product roadmap with Canny.io.

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What are the best alternatives to Canny.io?

ProdCamp vs Canny io

ProdCamp (us!) is a company that was founded in late 2020 and provides an all-in-one customer feedback and product management tool. It focuses on the ability to collect and organize feedback from multiple channels, analyze and prioritize the feedback, and then close the loop by informing customers of product changes.

Pros 👍

• For most companies, ProdCamp’s pricing model means it can be significantly less expensive than Canny. (updated on March 2022: with the Canny's pricing approach change and prices increase, ProdCamp makes the cut).
  

• ProdCamp has a number of important features that Canny is missing such as an in-app widget, Chrome extension, and more. Take a look at the comparison table below for more details.
  

Con 👎

• ProdCamp is a newer, less-established company on the market.
  

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Pricing: ProdCamp’s paid plans start at just $99/mo compared with $400/mo for Canny.io.

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Uservoice vs Canny.io

UserVoice is a company launched in 2008 providing a web-based solution to capture and manage user feedback for any website or product. It counts more than 100,000 customers across the world.

Pro 👍

• Uservoice is a well established company with a proven customer satisfaction history.
  

Cons 👎

• Enterprise focus – Uservoice is full of bells and whistles which makes navigating through all the features a challenge. 
  

• Pricing – Canny.io’s pricing model is already quite expensive, but Uservoice brings pricing to an even higher level!
  

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Pricing: Pricing isn’t publicly shown on Uservoice’s website so you must request a demo and talk to a sales representative for exact costs.

ProductBoard vs Canny.io

ProductBoard is a company founded in 2014 that offers a feature-rich product made for enterprise businesses. It focuses on gathering customers around roadmaps via feedback boards and public idea boards.

Pros 👍

• Productboard is a good fit for businesses that rely heavily on roadmaps as their way to collect feedback.
  

• The company was established back in 2014 and has 230+ employees, which makes it a reputable player in the space. 

‍Cons 👎

• An overly complex user interface, which makes the tool tricky to deploy and maintain. 
  

• ProductBoard’s pricing is similar to Canny.io. It limits each subscription by the number of viewers and editors, so your pricing can grow very quickly to over $200-$300 per month. The pricing model is considered tricky and unclear by most users, which makes it extremely difficult to control costs.

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Pricing: Pricing starts from $25/month/maker (paid monthly) for the essential plan. If you require key features such as their Chrome extension, customer feedback portal, and more integrations, you’ll need to pay $70/month/maker (paid monthly) for their pro plan.

Upvoty vs Canny.io

Upvoty was founded in 2018 to help SaaS companies turn feedback into actionable product optimizations. It offers several ways of gathering user feedback for your product roadmap using a voting system, and keeps customers informed with a changelog. 

Pro 👍

• Pricing-wise Upvoty is more affordable with a subscription starting at $15/month with a higher level of customization (CSS, customer status, priority status). 

Cons 👎

• From a feature-set standpoint, both solutions are pretty similar, aside from the added layer of customization mentioned above.
  

• The billing model still relies on tracked users (yes, again), and you will need to at least get to the $59/month plan to collect feedback no matter how many users you have.
  

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Pricing: Pricing ranges from $15-$59/month. Note that the $15/month plan is limited to only 150 tracked users, 3 team members, and 1 board. 

Hotjar vs Canny.io

Just like ProductBoard, Hotjar was founded in 2014. It provides a range of tools from user behavior monitoring to feedback management. With Hotjar, you can leverage things like website or web application heatmaps, conversion funnels, form analytics, and visitor recordings.

Pro 👍

• Feature rich solution combining both user behavior analytics and feedback management.
  

Con 👎

• Because it offers user behavior analytics, Hotjar’s pricing is much higher than Canny.io, and it is also less easy to deploy, requiring the involvement of programmers or web developers.
  

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Pricing: Hotjar costs anywhere from €0/month to €389/month depending on how many daily sessions and recordings you want to capture.

Aha! vs Canny.io

Aha! Is a roadmapping tool founded in 2013 to empower product people to create and manage release plans and strategies across a large and complex portfolio of products. It handles product Management, analytics, prioritization, and roadmapping. Aha! is as powerful as it is complex to set up and maintain, and you will eventually need a team of programmers to get involved to ensure its successful deployment.

Pro 👍

• Aha! is a very robust solution with a large feature-set split across three main components: Roadmap, Ideas, Develop. 
  

Cons 👎

• If you decide to use the entire Aha! Workflow to collect, analyze and act upon feedback, your bill will quickly rise to several hundred dollars per month with a minimum number of seats per plan as much as $100/month per user (depending on the tiers and module you select).
  

• You will most likely need to involve developers or programmers to deploy and maintain the system, which will make it an even bigger investment in terms of resources and money.
  

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Pricing: Pricing for Aha is complicated with each element of the product suite billed separately. The combined cost of Aha’s roadmap tool, development tool, and feedback collection tool, starts from $107/month/user.

ProdCamp is the #1 Canny alternative for most companies

Unless you’re a large enterprise with some very specific feature requirements, the best alternative to Canny is likely to be ProdCamp. Why?

• ProdCamp is the most affordable solution 🤑 Unlike others, ProdCamp doesn’t charge based on ‘tracked users’ so you’re not going to receive an unexpected bill. And our pricing is from $24/month!
  

• ProdCamp has all the features you’re likely to need to manage customer feedback and your product. 📈 We don’t focus on just one element of feedback collection such as only roadmaps – you can collect, organize, manage, prioritize, and act on feedback wherever it comes from!
  

Best of all, you can try ProdCamp for free with no risk. So what are you waiting for?