Should I self-host Canny?
Canny wants $99/mo for a feedback board. Fider is a feedback board. It has voting, statuses, comments and SSO, boots with one Postgres, and the entire category is a solved problem.
Canny's roadmap-view polish and changelog hosting
Autopilot dedup/AI features
feature-request board · user voting · roadmap & statuses · changelog
* Percent of the subscription price. Your time is priced at the slider's rate — $0/h ("my homelab time is free and I love it") is a legitimate position. Every number is derived from the record, never hand-written. Price source, checked 2026-08-07.
Runs comfortably on a real VPS (2 GB+).
Boot to healthy measured at 62s on the 2GB reference env
# Fider — feedback board; Go binary + postgres. Sidecar probes it.
services:
fider:
image: getfider/fider:stable
container_name: fider
restart: unless-stopped
depends_on:
fider-db:
condition: service_healthy
environment:
BASE_URL: http://localhost:3003
DATABASE_URL: postgres://fider:fider@fider-db:5432/fider?sslmode=disable
JWT_SECRET: change-me-please-0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef
EMAIL_NOREPLY: noreply@example.com
# Fider panics at boot without an SMTP host — any value works, configure real mail later
EMAIL_SMTP_HOST: localhost
EMAIL_SMTP_PORT: "25"
ports:
- "3003:3000"
probe:
image: busybox:stable
network_mode: "service:fider"
depends_on:
- fider
command: sh -c 'while true; do sleep 30; done'
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD-SHELL", "nc -z localhost 3000 || exit 1"]
interval: 5s
timeout: 5s
retries: 40
start_period: 15s
fider-db:
image: postgres:16-alpine
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
POSTGRES_USER: fider
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: fider
POSTGRES_DB: fider
volumes:
- fider-db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U fider"]
interval: 5s
timeout: 5s
retries: 12
volumes:
fider-db:
Want a guided install instead? caniselfhostit.com/canny has AI-agent prompts that assume a bare machine — that's their half of the stool, and it's good.
FULL TIMED LOG
# Canny — verdict log - **Date:** 2026-08-10 - **Verdict:** YES — worth it - **Protocol:** v1 (2GB reference env, Docker preinstalled, AI assistant: claude-code) ## Setup evidence - Compose: `compose/canny-fider.yml` - Boot to healthy: **62s** measured this session - Setup time recorded: 12 min (boot + configuration to first working workflow) ## What broke / notes - Boot to healthy measured at 62s on the 2GB reference env ## The call Canny wants $99/mo for a feedback board. Fider is a feedback board. It has voting, statuses, comments and SSO, boots with one Postgres, and the entire category is a solved problem.