# Every Feedback Tool Priced: Canny, Featurebase, Frill, Nolt, Upvoty

> All five feedback rents on one page with 2026 prices and links — then the $0 alternative: three tables in your own database. Vote, statuses, voter emails, no meters.

Source: https://boringpush.com/blog/feedback-tools-priced-canny-featurebase-frill

## All five rents, one table (verify current — prices move)

| Tool | Entry price | Model | Free plan | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Canny](https://canny.io) | $79/mo | Per tracked user | 25 users | Bill scales with audience: ~$1,099/mo at 3k users |
| [Featurebase](https://featurebase.app) | $0 → $49/mo | Tiered | Yes (generous) | Jump from free to $49 with no cheap middle; per-seat pressure as teams grow |
| [Frill](https://frill.co) | $25/mo | Tiered | No | 50-idea cap on Starter; boards multiply cost |
| [Nolt](https://nolt.io) | $29/mo | Per board | No | Single board; no changelog module |
| [Upvoty](https://upvoty.com) | $15/mo | Per board tiers | No | Board limits; no changelog on entry |

Every one of them charges you, forever, to hear your own customers. The cheapest still extracts ~$180/year for the privilege. The most expensive scales *with your success* — growth triggers the invoice.

## What you're actually buying (it's smaller than you think)

Strip every tool above to what solo founders use: a board where users post ideas, votes that rank them, statuses (planned/in-progress/shipped), comments, and an email when something ships. That's five features. Portals, SSO, Salesforce syncs, and AI discovery are enterprise tail you will never touch — but you fund their development with your subscription.

The honest mapping: posts table, votes table, statuses column, comments table, one Resend call on shipment. An afternoon's schema. The industry turned it into $180–$13,000/year of rent.

## The schema (copy-paste, five tables is a lie — it's three)

Posts, votes, comments. Statuses live as a column, not a table. Voter emails come from the users table you already have:

```sql
CREATE TABLE post (
  id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  title TEXT NOT NULL CHECK (length(trim(title)) > 0),
  body TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  status TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT 'open'
    CHECK (status IN ('open', 'planned', 'shipped')),
  "createdAt" INTEGER NOT NULL
) STRICT;
CREATE TABLE vote (
  postId TEXT NOT NULL REFERENCES post(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
  voterKey TEXT NOT NULL,
  UNIQUE(postId, voterKey)
) STRICT;
-- comments: postId + body. Voter emails: join vote → user on shipment.
```

Ranking is `ORDER BY (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM vote WHERE postId = post.id) DESC` — or a cached count column maintained by insert/delete triggers when you pass ten thousand votes. Either way, no service, no sync, no seats.

## The triage ritual (15 minutes every Friday)

Open the board sorted by votes. Top item with a clear ask: set status `planned`, reply once with a rough shape ("thinking Q1, will confirm"). Anything shipped that week: flip to `shipped`, fire the voter email ("You asked, it's live: [link]") — that email is the highest-ROI message a founder sends, because every recipient voted for this exact outcome. Close duplicates with a comment pointing at the canonical post. Archive the bottom quartile yearly. Canny sells workflow around this ritual; the ritual is fifteen minutes and the workflow was always optional.

## The voter email that actually works

Subject: "You asked — it's live." Body: one line recalling their vote, one link, one question ("what should we build next?"). No newsletter template, no branding suite, no A/B test. Shipped-feature emails get opened because the reader pre-committed interest by voting — 60%+ open rates are normal here, which is why owning the voter list (not renting it inside Canny) matters more than it looks.

## The owned version (already built, in the kit)

Vote-ranked posts with deduped toggles, open-to-shipped status pipeline, threaded comments, voter emails via your own Resend key, public board plus paid-gated triage — all in your SQLite, all behind your CSS, all unmetered. Migration is a CSV weekend: export posts and votes, import with original timestamps, point nav at `/dashboard/boards`, cancel the subscription Monday.

What it honestly lacks: SAML SSO, granular staff roles, Salesforce sync, AI feedback discovery. If any of those is a today-need, keep your vendor and stop reading — the verdict section below says exactly that.

## Three-year math (the number that ends debates)

Solo founder, 2,000 users, one board: Canny Pro lands around $1,099/mo at 3k tracked users ($13,188/year) while Featurebase Growth holds $87–111/mo and Frill/Nolt sit $25–29/mo. Owned: $0, plus the Sunday afternoon of migration — once. Year-one totals: Canny ~$13k, Featurebase ~$1k, Frill ~$300, Nolt ~$350, owned $0 (plus $199 once for the whole kit, not just feedback). Year three, with 8,000 users: Canny is a custom quote "well above" $1,500/mo, Featurebase climbs tiers per seat, the flat tools hold — and owned is still $0 with the same three tables. Rent compounds with success; ownership amortizes to zero. That's the entire argument in one paragraph, and no vendor comparison page will print it.

### Which of the five is best if I must rent?

Featurebase on value (real free plan, modern UI, surveys included) unless you need Canny's ecosystem. Frill for widget-first simplicity. Nolt for single-board beauty. Never UserVoice unless an enterprise is paying.

### Do voters need accounts on the owned version?

Logged-in users vote, guests read — same guards as comments, no new auth surface, no voter-seat math because there are no seats.

### What happens to my data if a vendor raises prices?

That's the entire argument: with rented boards you export under duress on their timeline. With owned boards there is no timeline — it's SQLite with `VACUUM INTO` backups you already run.

### Canny vs Featurebase specifically?

Canny's per-tracked-user model punishes audience growth ($79/mo → $1,099/mo at 3k users); Featurebase's free tier plus $49/mo Growth is 12x cheaper at small scale per their own published math. Both still rent. Owned skips the comparison permanently.

## The top-down verdict

Five vendors, one business model: meter your relationship with your customers. An agent-first shipping kit puts the three tables in your database for $199 once — same votes, same statuses, same emails, zero rent, zero export risk. When the category charges you for listening, own the ears.