Canny.io

What is Canny

Canny is a dedicated software platform for managing customer feedback. Its main purpose is to help companies collect, organize, and prioritize feature requests and other user suggestions. This allows product teams to better understand customer needs, make data-informed decisions for their product roadmap, and communicate updates effectively. Canny was founded by Sarah Hum and Andrew Rasmussen to create a central hub for user feedback, moving it out of spreadsheets and scattered support tickets. The platform provides tools to not only gather ideas but also to analyze their potential impact, keeping users informed throughout the development process with public roadmaps and changelogs.

Canny Features

Canny offers a complete set of tools to manage the entire feedback lifecycle. Key features include:

• Feedback Collection: Gather suggestions from various sources. Users can post directly on a public or private feedback board. Team members can also add feedback on behalf of customers from tools like Intercom or email.
• Feedback Analysis: Uncover important insights from the collected data. You can see which requests are most popular, connect feedback to specific user segments, and identify which features might have the highest revenue impact.
• Prioritization Engine: Instead of just relying on votes, you can create a custom formula to score feature requests. This formula can weigh factors like effort, impact, and even customer revenue data from CRMs like Salesforce.
• Product Roadmaps: Easily create and share visual roadmaps. You can add prioritized features to a roadmap with a single click. Roadmaps can be made public to show customers what you are working on, or kept private for internal teams.
• Changelog Updates: Announce new features and product updates with a public changelog. When you release a feature, Canny can automatically notify every user who voted for or commented on that request, which helps with feature adoption and user engagement.
• AI Features (Autopilot): Canny uses AI to automate tasks. It can discover and capture feedback from customer conversations, summarize long comment threads, and suggest smart replies to get more context from users.

Canny Pricing Plans

Canny provides several pricing tiers designed to scale with a company's growth. The plans are structured to meet the needs of different team sizes and requirements.

• Free Plan: A basic plan for startups and small projects to start collecting feedback. It has limitations on features and the number of users.
• Growth Plan: Aimed at growing companies that need more advanced features. This plan typically includes more integrations, user segmentation, and private boards.
• Business Plan: For larger organizations that require advanced capabilities like CRM integrations (Salesforce, Hubspot), role-based permissions, and dedicated support. This plan is designed for teams that want to deeply integrate feedback into their business processes.

Canny Free Plan

Canny offers a Free plan that is a good starting point for collecting feedback. The free plan typically includes one feedback board, unlimited posts, and basic integrations. However, it has certain limitations. For example, it is limited to a small number of tracked users (users whose feedback you can analyze), includes Canny branding, and does not offer advanced features like private boards or user segmentation.

How to use Canny

Getting started with Canny is a straightforward process:

1. Sign Up and Create a Board: First, create an account and set up your first feedback board. You can customize its name, color, and logo to match your brand.
2. Install the Widget: Add the Canny widget to your website or application. This allows users to access the feedback portal directly from your product without needing a separate login.
3. Collect Feedback: Encourage users to post their ideas and vote on existing ones. Your team can also add feedback manually from support chats, emails, or sales calls.
4. Analyze and Prioritize: Use the dashboard to see which requests are trending. Merge duplicate posts to keep the board clean. Use the prioritization formula to score requests based on votes, customer value, and effort.
5. Build Your Roadmap: Move the highest-priority items to your roadmap. You can organize the roadmap by status, such as 'Planned', 'In Progress', and 'Complete'.
6. Close the Loop: When a feature is launched, update its status on the roadmap and publish an announcement on your changelog. Canny will automatically email all users who showed interest in that feature.

Pros and Cons of Canny

Pros:

• Centralized Feedback: It brings all user feedback into one organized place, making it easy to manage.
• User-Friendly Interface: The platform is modern, clean, and intuitive for both administrators and end-users.
• Excellent for Closing the Loop: The roadmap and changelog features are great for keeping customers informed and engaged.
• Powerful Integrations: It connects well with popular tools like Jira, Slack, and Intercom, fitting into existing workflows.

Cons:

• Pricing: The cost can become high for teams as they grow and need more tracked users or advanced features.
• Limited Free Plan: The free plan is quite restrictive, especially the limit on tracked users, which can be reached quickly.
• Focus on Feature Requests: It is highly specialized for feature requests and may not be a complete solution for all types of customer feedback, like bug reports or general satisfaction surveys.

Canny integrations

Canny integrates with a wide range of tools to streamline workflows across different departments:

• Jira, Asana, ClickUp: For project management. You can link Canny posts to tasks in these tools to sync development status.
• Slack: Get notifications about new feedback and comments directly in your Slack channels.
• Intercom, Zendesk: Customer support teams can capture feedback and link conversations to Canny posts directly from their helpdesk software.
• Salesforce, HubSpot: Connect customer feedback to revenue data. This helps prioritize requests from high-value customers.
• Microsoft Teams: Similar to the Slack integration, receive notifications and discuss feedback within Teams.
• GitHub: Link feedback posts to GitHub issues for a seamless developer workflow.

Canny Alternatives

Here are some popular alternatives to Canny:

1. Productboard: A more comprehensive product management platform. While Canny focuses heavily on feedback collection and roadmapping, Productboard also includes tools for user research, feature validation, and strategic planning.
2. UserVoice: An enterprise-focused feedback tool. UserVoice is one of the oldest players in the market and offers robust solutions for large corporations, often at a higher price point.
3. Aha!: A full suite of product development software. Aha! Ideas is their feedback management module, but it is part of a larger ecosystem that includes roadmapping, strategy, and development tools.
4. Frill: A simpler and more affordable alternative. Frill combines feedback boards, roadmaps, and changelogs in a lightweight package, making it a good choice for smaller teams and startups.

Canny API

Yes, Canny provides a public API that allows developers to build custom integrations and automate workflows. The API gives you programmatic access to data within Canny, such as posts, votes, comments, and users.

To get an API key, you need to be on a paid plan. You can find your secret API key in your Canny dashboard under Settings > API.

Here is a simple example using cURL to retrieve a list of posts from your board:

curl https://canny.io/api/v1/posts/list \
  -d apiKey=<YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY>

For more details, you can visit the official Canny API documentation on their website.

Canny Affiliate program

Canny does not have a traditional public affiliate program where you earn a commission for referrals. Instead, they offer a Partner Program designed for agencies, consultants, venture capitalists, and incubators who work with other companies. Partners can get benefits for referring clients to Canny. To join, you typically need to apply through their partner page on their website. If you cannot find the page, it is best to contact their support or sales team to inquire about partnership opportunities and the specific benefits they offer.