Canny vs Aha!: Which Product Management Tool Should I Choose?

Canny.io and Aha! are two of the leading product management tools, and are especially useful to people who want to use customer product feedback to inform their product decisions. In many ways, they’re similar platforms with overlapping features:

• They both have features for feedback collection from customers
• They both have frameworks for prioritizing features
• They both let you create and publish visual product roadmaps
• They can help you communicate changes and new features to customers

But they also differ significantly in the details.

Here, we give you a full feature comparison. The TL;DR summary is this:

• Canny is better for building in public. It’s better at centralizing customer feedback and prioritizing it. It’s also better value.
• Aha! is better for the building part of product management. It has more flexible roadmaps and more integrations to connect to your development workflow.

But you want to know all the details so you can figure out which of these feedback management tools could be most useful for your use case.

Here’s everything you need to know to compare Productboard and Aha! for building better software products.

Note: Savio is another product management tool specifically aimed at helping B2B SaaS companies build better software via product feedback. You can use our tool in place of both Aha! and Productboard, but we promise not to let that bias this article 😉.

Feature comparison: Aha! vs. Canny

How do they compare on an individual feature level? Here’s a big comparison table to help you see what each can do. (We’ve also thrown Savio in there so you can see how they all stack up against one another.)

Disclaimer: We created this table and article by carefully reviewing each tool’s website and also taking the tool for a free trial test drive. We made sure it was accurate when we wrote this, but features may have changed between then and when you read this. Let us know if you notice an error and we’ll happily update the article.

One further note: Aha! sells groups of features in separate modules. Here, we’ve given Aha! a ✅ if any of its Roadmap, Ideas, or Feedback modules have the feature.

	Aha!	Canny	Savio
Centralize feedback
Public feedback board	✅	✅	✅
Feedback board is optional	✅	❌	✅
Make feedback board private	✅	✅	✅
Hide feature vote counts	❌	❌	✅
Randomize feature order	❌	❌	✅
Collect feedback from Intercom	❌	✅	✅
Collect feedback from Zendesk	✅	✅	✅
Collect feedback from Salesforce	✅	✅ + Added cost	✅
Collect feedback from HubSpot CRM	❌	✅ + Added cost	✅
Collect feedback from Help Scout	❌	✅ w/ Chrome Extension	✅
Collect feedback from Slack	❌	✅	✅
Collect feedback from Chrome extension	❌	✅ + Added cost	✅
Forward feedback via email	✅	❌	✅
In-app feedback widget	✅	✅	❌
Feedback polls	✅	❌	❌
Zapier connection	✅	✅	✅
API	✅	✅	✅
Analyze and prioritize
Link feedback with account data	✅ (Only with Salesforce)	✅	✅
Feedback segmentation	✅ (Basic, and not with customer account data like plan)	✅	✅
Sort by MRR impact	❌	✅	✅
Prioritize features	✅	✅	✅
Integrate with Segment	❌	✅	✅
Roadmaps and development
Build visual internal roadmaps	✅	❌	✅
Build visual public roadmap	✅	✅	✅
Integrate with Jira	✅	✅	✅
Integrate with Shortcut	❌	❌	✅
Integrate with GitHub	✅	✅	❌
Integrate with Azure DevOps	✅	✅	❌
Integrate with Rally	✅	❌	❌
Integrate with GitLab	✅	❌	❌
Integrate with Pivotal Tracker	✅	❌	❌
Integrate with Redmine	✅	❌	❌
Integrate with FogBugz	✅	❌	❌
Integrate with Bugzilla	✅	❌	❌
Integrate with ClickUp	❌	✅	❌
Integrate with Linear	❌	✅	❌
Communicate with customers
Changelog tool	❌	✅	❌
Send updates to customers	❌	✅	✅
Personalized close-the-loop message	❌	❌	✅
Schedule “empathy session” meetings with customers	✅	❌	❌
Pricing
Free trial?	✅	✅	✅
Paid plans	$59/m/user to $149/m/user	$400/m (+$40/editor after 5)	$49/m - $299/m for first editor (+29/m/editor - $59/m/editor)
Annual cost for 5 PMs	$4,740	$4,800	$1,980
Annual cost for 15 PMs	$14,220	$9,600	$5,460

Aha! vs. Canny—What are the differences?

So what do those feature differences really mean for you? Let’s break it down.

Basically, both tools aim to help PMs collect feature ideas, understand customer needs, decide what to build, and communicate a unified product strategy to customers and stakeholders. To compare the two tools and decide which is better, we’ve established the following criteria:

1. Centralization: A useful tool will collect user feedback and new feature ideas from any channel.

2. Prioritization: A useful tool will help product teams analyze features to decide what to build next.

3. Communication: A useful tool will empower communication and alignment of your teams and stakeholders around a unified strategy.

4. Coordination: A useful tool will coordinate the product development process with your engineering and dev teams.

5. Close the loop: A useful tool will make it easy to follow up with customers when you build a feature they asked for.

6. Value: The best tool will provide lots of features for the price point—more bling, less cha-ching.

Here’s how Aha! and Canny stack up on each of those dimensions.

1. Centralization

Both Aha! and Canny have a number of different ways to pipe in customer feedback from all the channels you get it.

Voting boards: For both tools, public feature voting boards are one of the main ways that they collect feedback. The boards have many similarities, and vary mostly in terms of their look and feel.

Aha!’s feedback portal can be public or private. It’s essentially a list of features that your users can upvote.

Aha!’s public voting board.

Canny’s voting board is very similar, with just a slightly different design.

Canny’s public voting board.

Neither Aha! nor Canny’s voting boards are designed in a way to minimize bias or some of the other downsides of using voting boards. (Savio’s is. You can hide vote counts and randomize feature request order, which both minimize bias.)

Integrations: Canny has more integrations to bring in feedback, with 4. Aha! only has 2. (Savio has 6).

Other channels: Canny, Aha!, and Savio all have a Zapier integration and an API for customizable integrations. Canny and Aha! Also, both have embeddable in-app feedback widgets that bring in feedback from your product.

Canny (and Savio) has a Chrome extension that lets you bring in feedback from any web app, but Aha! Doesn’t.

On the other hand, Aha! has a poll feature, while Canny doesn’t.

Overall: It’s close, but we think that Canny is better at centralization. The 2 extra integrations and the Chrome extension mean it’s able to collect feedback from virtually anywhere, like your customer support tool. Aha! is much more limited. The polling feature is nice, but we don’t think it makes up for the inability to get feedback from Intercom, Help Scout, HubSpot, and so on.

Savio is even better because it has 6 integrations to Canny’s 4.

2. Prioritization

How good is each tool at helping you decide what to build next?

Aha!: Aha!’s prioritization framework centres around a “product value score” which is a product of your score on a feature of its impact and effort. When you sort by that score, you get high-priority features at the top of the list. Then you can also drag and drop to tweak your list or see the priority in a chart format.

Aha! creates a priority score from scores on impact and effort.

Aha does let you segment your feature requests, but only by generic variables like geographic location, customer name, and company size. It doesn’t let you connect your account data with your feedback or let you slice and dice your features by useful customer attributes like MRR, plan type, and type of customer (prospect, churned customer, etc.)

Canny: Canny has a better prioritization framework. It still lets you score features on impact and effort, but it also lets you segment your feedback by useful customer attributes, like monthly spend. That empowers you to prioritize more effectively because you know which customers are asking for each feature.

With Canny, you can segment your feature requests by customer attributes like MRR. (You can do this with Savio, too.)

Overall: Canny is better than Aha! because it has a more powerful segmentation engine. Savio has this same advantage.

3. Communication and team alignment

It takes a village to raise a product, so it’s helpful if that village is all aligned on the kind of product you’re trying to raise. The best product tool will help get everyone on the same page.

Roadmap tools: Canny, Aha!, and Savio each have product roadmaps that are designed to align your teams. Canny’s roadmap is a list of features categorized by their place in the development process, along with a few filters and customizable options (like MRR). Canny is designed to help you build in public, and the roadmaps reflect that focus on providing customers with information about what you’re going to build next.

Canny’s roadmap is a list of features categorized by their stage in the development workflow.

Aha!’s roadmap is more complicated and feature-rich, probably because its primary purpose is for internal teams, not customers. It’s aimed at helping everyone understand what the big product milestones are, which teams are responsible for what, and when they’re due. You can set the roadmap up as a Gantt chart or as a list of tasks. You can also distinguish between releases, different features, and initiatives.

Aha’s roadmap is more complex and is designed for internal teams.

Savio’s roadmaps are super flexible—you can fully customize them, including as many or as few features as you need to suit your audience. They also are unique in that they display evidence to justify your product decisions. 

For example, you can quickly see the number of requests for a feature or each feature’s cumulative MRR. That helps reduce disagreement (or conflict) about roadmapping decisions. 

*Savio roadmaps display feedback data so you can help others understand why you made your product decisions (and minimize roadmap disagreements).

Other communication tools: Canny, Aha!, and Savio also let you post updates on feedback and features through automatic updates to Slack. (With Canny, you can also post to Microsoft Teams.)

Overall: We think Aha’s roadmap has a bit more functionality, so we’ll give it the win. But it really depends on what you’re trying to do. Canny might be better if you’re trying to build in public; Aha! is better if your roadmap is more for your internal teams. Savio and Canny are about the same in terms of functionality.

4. Coordination with development

Your product management tool should be connected to your engineering workflow tool or your project management tool. That way, you can set up automations so that when your dev team builds a feature, its status is automatically updated in your PM tool.

Aha! connects with 9 development tools: Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps, Rally, GitLab, Pivotal Tracker, Redmine, FogBugz, and Bugzilla.

Canny connects with 6: Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps, ClickUp, Asana, and Linear.

Savio connects with 2: Jira and Shortcut.

Overall: Aha! is the most flexible and has the most integrations. But it really depends on the tools your company uses. If you use ClickUp or Linear, Canny is probably better. If you use Shortcut, Savio is best.

5. Close the loop

Once you build a feature that your customers ask for, follow up and tell them (close the feedback loop). Here’s how each tool lets you do that.

Canny: Canny’s solution is a changelog. You can also set up automatic emails, but there isn’t a way to send personalized close-the-loop messages to customers that asked for a feature.

Aha!: Aha! doesn’t have a great solution here. There aren’t really any ways to easily let customers know when you build a feature—there are no automated updates or notifications. You can organize “empathy sessions” but that seems very manual and time-intensive and might not be a good use of your customers’ time.

Overall: Canny is much better than Aha! because you can send automatic emails and there’s a changelog. Savio is even better because you can quickly send hundreds of personalized close-the-loop emails in just a few clicks.

6. Value

What does each solution cost?

Canny pricing: Canny’s pricing model is relatively simple—you’re looking at $400/month for 5 editors and $40/month for each additional editor. That gives you most of the features you’d need for a robust feedback management system. There's also a more limited free plan.

• Scenario 1: a team of 5 PMs would cost you $4,800 per year

• Scenario 2: a team of 15 PMs would cost you $9,600 per year

Screenshot of Canny’s pricing plans.

Aha! pricing: Aha!’s pricing plans are more complicated because they’ve split up the features into three different modules: Roadmaps, Ideas, and Feedback. (There’s also a Create module with collaboration tools like whiteboards and a Develop module that’s an alternative to Jira.)

To help you estimate your pricing and compare it to Canny, we’re assuming you’ll want the plans that give you roughly the same features as Canny. That means getting the Premium Roadmaps module ($59/user/month) and the Advanced Ideas module ($20/user/month add-on). Together, you’d pay $79/user/month.

• Scenario 1: a team of 5 PMs would cost you $4,740 per year

• Scenario 2: a team of 15 PMs would cost you $14,220 per year

Screenshot of Aha’s pricing plans.

Savio pricing: Savio is better value than both Canny and Aha!. You get the same features while paying less.

• Scenario 1: A team of 5 PMs would cost you $1,980

• Scenario 2: A team of 15 PMs would cost you $5,460

Screenshot of Savio’s pricing plans.

Overall: For small startup teams, Canny and Aha! are about the same in terms of value. But Canny becomes better value for larger teams. Savio has the best value of the three for teams of all sizes and even large enterprises.

The takeaway: Canny is better for feedback centralization and feature prioritization; Aha! is better for roadmaps and coordination with developers.

Both tools are popular for a reason—they are useful to PMs who want to build great software. But which is “better” depends on what you care more about and the other tools you use.

1. Centralization: Canny is better. It’s much more flexible about bringing feedback in from all your channels. (Savio is the best at this.)

2. Prioritization: Canny is better than Aha! because you can segment based on important customer attributes like MRR (Savio can do this too).

3. Communication: Aha’s wins—its roadmaps have more functionality. But really, Aha’s roadmaps are more for internal team members, while Canny’s roadmaps are better for building in public. (Also we think Canny’s user interface is more visually appealing.)

4. Coordination: Aha! wins in general because it has more integrations. But it depends on your use cases—look to see which fits better into your product development tool stack.

5. Close the loop: Canny is better than Aha! because it can send automatic emails and also has a changelog. (Savio is even better because you can send personalized close-the-loop emails.)

6. Value: They’re roughly the same for small teams, but Canny is better value for larger teams. (Savio is the best value).

	Aha!	Canny	Savio
Centralization	🥈	🥇	🥇
Prioritization	🥉	🥈	🥇
Communication	🥇	🥈	🥈
Coordination	🥇	🥈	🥉
Close the loop	🥉	🥈	🥇
Value	🥉	🥈	🥇

So which is the best tool? It depends on what you need and on what other tools you have in your stack.

Savio has comparable features to both Canny and Aha! and is much better value. Also, in some ways, it’s greatly superior to both Canny and Aha!—its centralization and segmentation engines are second to none. Plus, our support is amazing. (It’s me. I’m your support. )

Try Savio out for free to see if it’s the right fit for you

Sign up for a free trial.

(Not ready? Learn more here.)

More resources and customer feedback tool comparisons

Still not sure what tool is best for you? We’ve got a ton of resources comparing different PM tools. Have a look through to better understand which features each tool has.

Product management software tools

• The Ultimate Guide to Product Management Tools
• 11+ Public Feature Voting Tools
• 12+ Apps for Tracking Software Feature Requests
• 20+ Tools for Managing Customer Feedback
• 10+ Best In-App Feedback Tools for SaaS Products
• 8+ Free Feature Request Apps

Learn more about Canny

• Canny Pricing Plans
• Canny Alternatives
• Canny vs. Savio
• Canny vs. Productboard
• Canny vs. ProdPad
• Canny vs. UserVoice

Learn more about Aha!

• Aha! Pricing Plans
• Aha! Alternatives
• Aha! vs. Savio
• Aha! vs. Productboard
• Aha! vs. ProductPlan

Last Updated: 28-04-2023

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