Top AnnounceKit Alternatives

Last Updated on April 28, 2025 by Ewen Finser

Do you find yourself wading through endless release notes and changelogs, wondering how best to keep your customers in the loop? If so, you’re not alone. 

As our products evolve and our team expands, I’ve found that communicating product updates effectively gets increasingly challenging. When there are a lot of changes happening at once and multiple people involved, things can quickly become chaotic—especially if you ever need to pull back a release at the last minute.

This is where a dedicated product release platform comes in handy—it helps you organize all those updates and makes it easy to share important news with your users, keeping everyone on the same page.

Streamlining communication using product release platforms

One product release platform that’s been around for a while is AnnounceKit, a well-established software specifically focused on product announcements and updates. AnnounceKit helps communicate product updates, collect feature requests, and centralize feedback.

However, there are plenty of other product release platforms available, each offering unique features that might make them a better fit than AnnounceKit depending on your company needs. Here are my top five picks.

AnnounceKit alternatives at a glance

• Best Overall for Growing Teams: LaunchNotes
• Best for Early-Stage Companies on a Budget: Featurebase or Frill
• Best for Companies Focused on User Retention: Beamer
• Best for Companies Wanting an Ultra-Simple, No-Frills Solution: Announcefly

The top AnnounceKit alternatives

1. LaunchNotes – My go-to for keeping everyone in the loop during product releases.

Clear communication is a top priority for me, and that’s exactly where LaunchKit excels. What I love most is how it streamlines our updates, ensuring everyone—whether it’s our internal team or our users—always knows what’s happening and when. That’s why LaunchKit tops my list; it truly delivers on keeping communication simple and effective.

The Pros:

One of LaunchNotes’ best features is how well it syncs with Jira. We get real-time updates pulled right from our development team directly into our LaunchNotes roadmap. Everything’s in one place, which also makes it a breeze for leaders or stakeholders to track progress and stay updated as each release milestone rolls around.

Something else that really stands out for me is the way LaunchNotes sends targeted updates to the right audience. We can personalize announcements, and even better, collect feedback directly from those using our product. This makes it so much easier to figure out what features are working, what’s falling flat, and what our users actually want next. In my experience, getting that real-time feedback—and being able to act on it—makes product improvements way more straightforward.

The Cons:

LaunchNotes is still pretty new, and a few integrations aren’t as fleshed out as you might find with older, more established platforms. Also, at the moment there’s no way to keep some communications strictly internal—so some of the things you share will be visible both internally and externally.

The Price:

As for pricing, LaunchNotes is definitely geared toward companies that are scaling up rather than little startups. There’s just one regular plan (plus an enterprise option). They do offer a 14-day free trial as well as an entry-level version, but the starter plan has limited features.

2. Beamer – boosting user engagement through effective communication.

The Pros:

Beamer’s customer communication platform really helps us stay proactive when it comes to user engagement. If we notice that some users are becoming inactive or aren’t responding to a product launch the way we’d hoped, we can easily reach out to understand what’s going on. It’s a great way for us to identify issues early, find out what might not be clicking, and adjust our approach to better meet our users’ needs.

Instead of sending generic email blasts, we can reach out using segmented, personalized messages tailored to different groups of users. When we show people that we understand their unique needs and preferences, they’re much more likely to engage with and adopt our product.

The Cons:

Their segmentation options could be a bit better, and they could have more integrations with external platforms. Some users report slowness with Beamer installed on their website’s loading speed, however we have not experienced this.

The Price:

Beamer offers Starter, Pro, and Scale plans, so you can choose the option that best fits your company’s size and needs. Keep in mind that costs will increase as your user base grows. There’s also a free trial available, so you can test it out before committing.

Featurebase – an affordable and simple product release platform. 

Featurebase is a product release tool designed to help product companies gather feedback more easily, lighten the load on support teams, and keep users in the loop about new updates. Some of the things I really like about Featurebase are its public feedback boards, the ability to vote on ideas, interactive roadmaps, detailed changelogs, and handy in-app widgets. All of these make it super easy to involve users and keep them engaged at every stage of the feedback process.

The Pros:

The platform gives one centralized spot to gather, organize, and rank all our user feedback. And the best part – users can vote on the features that they want to see next. The interface is also really clean and easy to use. Plus, it integrates smoothly with many other tools out there.

The Cons:

The customization options are a bit limited compared to other platforms, and right now, it only supports English. The setup can be a tad complicated if you’re just starting out. Also, some users have mentioned they’d like to see more frequent feature updates.

The Price:

Featurebase is more affordable than many other similar tools. They have two main pricing plans to choose from. The Growth Plan gives you unlimited end users and posts, supports up to five feedback boards, and comes with basic integrations. The Premium Plan includes everything Featurebase has to offer, such as unlimited boards, advanced integrations, single sign-on, and user segmentation.You’ll have to pay extra if you want to add more admins or managers to your team. 

Frill has been a quick and easy way for me to gather valuable customer insights. I found its intuitive interface really easy to set up and learn, so I was up and running in no time. Besides collecting feedback and suggestions, Frill lets me share my product roadmap so users are always updated on what’s coming next. I can easily embed it into my website or app, customize the language to suit my audience, and even adjust the widget colors to match my brand.

The Pros:

With Frill, I can easily collect feedback using their handy widgets, and there’s no limit on how many team members or users I can track. My users can vote on ideas, which helps me see what matters most to them. I also have access to an announcements portal to keep everyone in the loop, plus a public roadmap to showcase upcoming features and plans.

The Cons:

One downside I’ve noticed is that people have to create an account to vote on an idea. This is a bit of a hassle, especially for users who aren’t already signed up for my tool, and it might discourage some from sharing their feedback. And since Frill is still a relatively new tool, some of the most requested features and integrations are still in development and on their roadmap.

The Price:

Frill has budget-friendly plans that are great for small businesses to gather product feature suggestions from users. With the Startup plan, most features are accessible and also can track up to 50 ideas for a low price. If more is needed, upgrading to the Business plan for unlimited tracked ideas is possible without breaking the bank.

Announcefly – a simple platform focusing on changelog notifications.

Announcefly deserves an honorable mention in my opinion because they do an amazing job on focusing on increased product adoption by notifying users of changes. Announcefly comes with a built-in changelog and a news feed widget, both of which I can use on my app or website. It also integrates with Slack, making it easy to keep my team updated and connected.

The Pros:

What I really like about Announcefly is how simple it is—it barely has any learning curve at all. Plus, I can easily embed video tutorials in the changelog to help users understand how to use new products or features right away.

The Cons:

Sometimes too simple can be a problem. In this case, Announcefly does not have the ability to do customization which may be an issue with some companies. There also isn’t a dedicated mobile app, which makes it less convenient for users who like to manage things from their phones or tablets.

The Pricing:

Announcefly is a bit more expensive than other options, with its lowest plan starting higher than other platforms. And while others let you track unlimited users, Announcefly’s basic plan only includes up to 1,000 active users each month. If I need to support up to 10,000 active users, I’d have to move up to their higher-priced plan, which is much more extensive.

Final thoughts on product release platform alternatives

All things considered, I think LaunchNotes fills a gap that many product management tools gloss over: clear, consistent communication. It makes gathering feedback and sharing updates with everyone so much simpler, and really helps teams focus on what matters most to their users.

Beamer is great for user engagement and communication, while Featurebase combines strong engagement features with affordable pricing. Frill offers a well-rounded all-in-one platform at a budget-friendly monthly price, and Announcefly really shines when it comes to providing a reliable changelog.

There are plenty of other platforms out there, but these are the ones I have the most experience with. Using a product release platform is incredibly valuable—it helps keep everything organized and makes it easy to share important updates with your users, so everyone stays informed and up to date.