Build Your Own Canny Alternative on WordPress (For Free)

Canny costs $400/month. UserVoice costs $799/month. ProductBoard starts at $80/month per maker. These tools do one thing: collect feature requests and let customers vote on them.

Jetonomy’s Idea Boards do the same thing – plus discussion forums, Q&A spaces, and automatic moderation – for free. On your own WordPress site. With your own data.

This is not a compromise. For most companies under 10,000 users, a self-hosted idea board is not just cheaper – it is better, because it lives alongside your community instead of being a separate SaaS login your customers forget about.

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What You Get With Paid Tools vs. Jetonomy

FeatureCanny ($400/mo)UserVoice ($799/mo)Jetonomy (Free)

Idea submissionYesYesYes

Customer votingYesYesYes

Status tracking (Planned, In Progress, Shipped)YesYesYes

Discussion on each ideaYesYesYes

Voter notifications on status changeYesYesYes

Discussion forums alongside feedbackNoNoYes (Forum spaces)

Q&A with accepted answersNoNoYes (Q&A spaces)

Trust-based moderationNoNoYes (6 trust levels)

Self-hosted (own your data)No (their servers)No (their servers)Yes (your WordPress)

White-label brandingEnterprise onlyEnterprise onlyYes (Pro)

Annual cost$4,800$9,588$0

Why Self-Hosted Wins for Most Companies

Your Data Stays on Your Server

When you use Canny or UserVoice, your customer feedback lives on their servers. If you cancel, you lose access to years of feature requests, vote counts, and customer conversations. With Jetonomy, all data is in your WordPress database. You own it forever.

One Login, One Platform

Canny requires customers to create a separate account or authenticate via OAuth. That is one more signup step, one more password, one more “I forgot my login.” With Jetonomy on your WordPress site, customers use their existing account. They are already logged in.

Feedback + Support + Discussion in One Place

Canny handles feature requests. But when a customer asks a question, you redirect them elsewhere. When they want to discuss a use case, that happens in a different tool. Jetonomy puts Ideas, Q&A, and Forums side by side. Customers move naturally between asking questions, suggesting features, and discussing workflows.

No Per-Seat Pricing Surprises

SaaS feedback tools often charge per tracked user or per team member. As your customer base grows, your feedback tool bill grows with it. Jetonomy has no usage limits. 100 voters or 100,000 – the cost is the same: zero.

How to Set It Up (20 Minutes)

Step 1: Install Jetonomy

Install Jetonomy on your WordPress site. The setup wizard creates your community structure. Choose to create an Ideas space when prompted.

Step 2: Create Your Feedback Board

Create an Ideas space called “Feature Requests” or “Product Roadmap.” Set visibility to public (so anyone can vote) or private (logged-in customers only). Set join policy to open.

Step 3: Seed with Existing Requests

Go through your email, support tickets, and internal backlog. Create the top 15-20 feature requests as ideas in the board. This gives customers something to vote on immediately and prevents the empty-board problem.

Step 4: Add In-Product Links

Add a “Suggest a Feature” link in your product’s sidebar, help menu, or footer that goes directly to the Ideas space. When customers email feature requests, reply with: “Great idea! Submit it to our public roadmap so other customers can vote: [link].”

Step 5: Add Complementary Spaces

While you are at it, add two more spaces to create a complete product community:

• Help & Support (Q&A) – community-driven support with accepted answers
• Product Discussion (Forum) – use cases, workflows, general conversation

These three spaces together (Ideas + Q&A + Forum) replace Canny ($400/mo), a support community tool ($100-300/mo), and a discussion forum ($50-100/mo). Total savings: $550-800/month.

The Trust Level Advantage (What Canny Can’t Do)

Canny and UserVoice have a spam problem. Anyone can create an account and submit garbage ideas or game the voting system. They rely on manual moderation by your team.

Jetonomy’s trust levels solve this automatically. New accounts start with limited permissions. They can vote, but they can’t submit ideas until they have demonstrated genuine engagement (configurable threshold). By the time someone can submit an idea, they are a real user with real feedback – not a drive-by spammer.

At higher trust levels, your most engaged customers can close duplicate ideas, edit unclear submissions, and curate the board. Your product team gets clean, organized feedback without spending time on moderation.

Real Savings Over 3 Years

YearCannyUserVoiceJetonomyJetonomy Pro

Year 1$4,800$9,588$0$199

Year 2$9,600$19,176$0$398

Year 3$14,400$28,764$0$597

3-year total$14,400$28,764$0$597

Even with Jetonomy Pro (which adds private messaging, polls, analytics, and badges), you save $13,800 vs Canny and $28,167 vs UserVoice over 3 years. And you own all your data.

When to Stay with Canny or UserVoice

Be honest about when a SaaS tool makes more sense:

• You don’t have WordPress. Jetonomy requires a WordPress site. If your stack is fully custom, Canny might be simpler.
• You need Salesforce/HubSpot integration. Canny and UserVoice have deeper CRM integrations built in. Jetonomy connects via webhooks but doesn’t have native CRM sync.
• You have 50,000+ monthly active users on the feedback board. At extreme scale, hosted solutions handle infrastructure for you. (Though Jetonomy handles this fine with proper hosting.)
• Your team is non-technical and can’t manage WordPress. SaaS tools require zero infrastructure management.

For the other 90% of companies – especially those already on WordPress – building your own is the smarter choice.

Start Today

Your next step is a 20-minute experiment. Install Jetonomy, create an Ideas space, seed it with 15 feature requests from your backlog, and send the link to 10 customers. If the votes start rolling in (they will), you just saved $4,800/year.

Download Jetonomy Free See Idea Boards in the Demo