I built a Canny alternative as a first-time founder, here’s what I learned

A few weeks ago I had no idea what a changelog was.
Today I have a live SaaS product called ReleaseLog — an AI-powered changelog, roadmap, and feature request tool for indie founders — and it’s accepting real payments.
I’m not a developer. I used AI tools to build it. And I’m sharing this because I know there are other non-technical founders sitting on an idea wondering if it’s even possible without knowing how to code. It is.

Why I built it

I kept noticing that indie founders ship great products in silence. Their users have no idea what’s being built, what’s changing, or what’s coming next. There’s no communication layer between the founder and their users.
Tools like Canny exist to solve this but even their free plan caps you at 25 tracked users, you hit that ceiling fast. Every paid plan requires an annual contract with no monthly option at any tier. And their AI features cost extra credits on top of the subscription price.
So I built ReleaseLog. Changelog, public roadmap, and feature requests, all in one place. Starting at $12/month billed monthly. No annual contract. AI writing assistant included flat in the price. No extra credits. No surprise bills.

What the product does

When a founder publishes a changelog entry their subscribers get notified automatically by email. Their users can visit a public page to see what’s been shipped, vote on what they want built next, and submit feature requests.
The AI writing assistant takes rough notes and turns them into polished professional updates in seconds. So instead of staring at a blank page trying to write “we fixed some bugs” in a way that doesn’t sound terrible, you type your rough notes and the AI handles the rest.
There’s also an embeddable widget. One line of code that adds a floating “What’s New” button to any website. Click it and a sidebar slides in showing the latest updates without the user ever leaving the page.

What I learned building it

Building was the easy part. I had an AI agent handle most of the code. The hard part was everything else. Stripe integration, DNS records, email deliverability, production vs development databases, deployment pipelines.
Things that took 5 minutes in my head took 3 hours in reality. And things I assumed were working weren’t because I hadn’t deployed yet.
The biggest lesson: the preview is not the product. Test everything on the live deployed version not the development environment. They’re completely separate worlds.

Where I am now

The product is live at tryreleaselog.com. Payments work. Emails send. The widget embeds on external sites. All features are gated correctly behind the right plans.
Now I’m here on Indie Hackers trying to figure out distribution. Which is apparently the actual hard part.
If you’re building a SaaS product and want a simple affordable way to keep your users informed. I’d love for you to try it.
And if you’ve been through the “built the thing, now what” phase. I’d genuinely love to hear what worked for you.