Should I self-host Canny?

What you lose

• Canny's roadmap-view polish and changelog hosting
• Autopilot dedup/AI features

What you're paying Canny for

• feature-request board
• user voting
• roadmap & statuses
• changelog

Ranked alternatives

1. Fider

A feedback board on your own domain: customers post ideas, everyone votes, and nobody bills you per tracked user.

getfider/fider · ★ 4,462 · last commit 2d ago · AGPL-3.0

Hardware

Runs comfortably on a real VPS (2 GB+).

The tested compose file (our evidence, CI-booted)

# 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.

Verification

# 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.

Verdict history

• 2026-08-10: unscored → YES — Initial verdict: Canny wants $99/mo for a feedback board.