Top 7 Free Changelog Tools for Developers and Founders

A changelog is a list of all the changes made to a product or project in chronological order. Changelogs are frequently published by software firms to keep users and customers informed about new product releases. Simultaneously, changelogs may help software development teams remain on top of changes to features or APIs they don't work on.

A changelog tool is a software that assists you in creating and managing your changelog so you don't have to manually code the web publishing or add each release note. It's critical to provide your consumers with a changelog for various reasons.

Also, changelogs are published by the world's most successful software firms to keep track of modifications and ensure that they are transparent. So are changelogs necessary? Well yes! If you want to impress your users and keep your internal development team on the same page changelogs are a necessity. Some more reasons why changelogs are necessary:

Inform users about the new features and the benefits they can give to boost user retention.

Share highly precise feature upgrades ahead of time so that people are better equipped to deal with the changes.

To increase the perceived value of your product subscription, show users that it is always being updated.

Here are some free changelog tools to keep your users and teams up to speed on upgrades and releases.

Github

GitHub is a software development platform that is utilised by more than 50 million software engineers worldwide. Your Git repository's commit messages may be used to automatically build a changelog.

There will be no visuals in them, and they will not be automatically structured in an appealing and user-friendly manner. So that the changelog publishing appears great, your team will need to custom code the output.

You'll also need to be cautious as a team when writing commit messages; otherwise, you risk boring and confounding your users who are looking for a resource to learn about updates.

Headway

You may make a public changelog page or an in-product widget with Headway. Custom branding is also available to ensure that your changelog fits the look and feel of your website and app.

You may use changelog updates to notify users not just about new releases, but also about issues your team is aware of and trying to fix. This provides you with a direct line of communication for any product updates.

Although the free plan includes several useful features (such as limitless changelogs, design customization, and Twitter connectivity), you'll need to upgrade to the subscription plan if you want to host your changelog on a custom domain.

Furthermore, Headway is merely a free changelog tool that lacks additional capabilities that SaaS companies require, such as customer feedback.

Frill

The frill is a collecting customer feedback programme that not only collects feedback but also manages roadmaps and changelogs, which the platform refers to as Announcements.

The tool is recognised for providing a far more pleasant user experience than its competitors. Customers can upvote recommendations made by other users using the customer feedback function.

This is beneficial since it helps your team prioritise upgrades by reducing duplicate proposals. Customer input may also be automatically integrated into your roadmap from a single centralised location. The frill is a wonderful alternative for changelogs since it allows you to include photos in your announcements.

Customers will find them more entertaining to read because of the visual content, and they will comprehend the announcements even if they do not read them.

Changelogfy

Changelogfy is a service that allows you to manage your public changelog and gather user feedback. You may also share your roadmap with people in a transparent manner so that they are aware of what you're working on and what you're focusing on next.

You may integrate the update widget in your app and collect reactions and feedback for each changelog update using the changelog functionality.

This is useful for tracking which upgrades and releases receive the most favourable and negative comments from your users, ensuring that you don't release them into the vacuum. Its UX isn't as user-friendly or quick to navigate as Frill, according to reviews.

Beamer

Beamer is a changelog tool that lets you create a standalone changelog page or utilise a changelog notification widget in your app to keep users up to date. Businesses with less than 1000 visitors to their changelog page or notification app can use their free changelog tool.

As a result, this is best suited to amateurs or completely new programmes. In addition, you'll need to upgrade to a subscription plan to use their user feedback tools.

Composer

Composer, an open-source PHP dependency management, may also be used to build changelogs. Composer-changelogs is a Composer plugin that converts Composer updates into announcements that your users can read and understand.

Release notes

ReleaseNote is a cost-effective choice for publishing product releases in a user-friendly style among premium options. You may use an embed widget for your app and release banners for your website to spread the news about your product releases in addition to creating and managing changelogs.

Users are reminded to check the release mailbox and obtain the newest news via the widget, which displays how many product updates they haven't read yet. You may also send your users professionally crafted emails to advertise recent upgrades.

ReleaseNote becomes an all-in-one solution for managing and publicising your changelog as a result of this. release notes, on the other hand, lacks crucial elements that would aid in the consolidation of your product updates technology stack, such as user feedback collecting.

Using a changelog tool is a quick and easy approach to keep everyone informed about all of your team's hard work on your product. Choose the best option and implement it to keep consumers and users informed.

I’m Shubham Sharma and I’m a digital marketer and technical writer. I’m passionate about exploring and writing about innovation, technology, and digital marketing trends.