Migrating off Canny to another tool

Short answer. Moving off Canny is three jobs: get your data out, load it into the new tool, and tell customers where their requests went. Canny's board CSV carries posts, vote totals, comment counts, tags, status, author, owner and an Associated MRR column, but not comment text and not who voted. Voters come from a separate voter-list export on each post, and comments, voters and companies come from the Canny API. Then check what your destination's importer actually carries, because some take a vote total and nothing more. If the destination is not another voting board, Modem (our product) connects to Canny and, when an admin starts the backfill, imports full post history, up to 10,000 posts and 500 comments per post. It imports vote counts, not voter lists, and it has no public board.

Teams leave for different reasons. Canny bills by tracked user, meaning anyone with a post, vote or comment attributed to them, which reviewers say fits poorly with many free or trial users (see Canny's pricing). Some find the export thinner than they expected. Others find that a destination's importer moved vote totals but not the people behind them. Those last two are about data, so this guide starts with exactly what each export holds, then gives a checklist you can follow with any destination.

What Canny exports, and what stays behind

Canny gives you more than one way out. Per Canny's export documentation and API reference:

Export	Where	What's in it	What's missing
Board CSV	Settings, Boards, Export Data	Post title and detail, score (total votes), comment count, created date, image URLs, status, post URL, tags, author, category, owner, associated MRR	Comment text, one row per voter, and (from the documented columns) company names
Voter list	A post's voter list, "Export List" button	The people who voted on that post	It is per post, so a large board means a lot of clicking. We did not confirm its columns, so open one export and check
Roadmap CSV	Select posts on the roadmap, then export	The posts you select	Same gaps as the board CSV
API	A secret API key from company settings, sent as the `apiKey` parameter	`posts/list`, `boards/list`, `comments/list`, `companies/list`, `users/list` and `votes/list`	Nothing structural, but you write the script

Check the pagination before you script it. posts/list uses skip. votes/list is a v2 endpoint and uses a cursor (hasNextPage and a cursor value), and comments/list and companies/list use cursors too. limit runs from 1 to 100 and defaults to 10, so set it. Canny also rate-limits per API key in one-second, one-minute and one-hour windows, with allowances that depend on your plan. When we checked on 2026-10-05, the Free plan was the lowest at 5 requests a second, 100 a minute and 1,000 an hour, so a large board on Free needs a delay between calls. Confirm the current numbers on the API reference before you run anything.

Canny also has an MCP server that lets AI tools read feedback groups and MRR. That is another way to pull data if you would rather ask than script. We did not test it for bulk export.

If you can only do two things, run the API pull for comments and votes and the board CSV for everything else. The voter list is the export people forget, and it is how you know who to tell later.

What destination importers carry

Before you pick a destination, ask one question: does the import carry individual voters and comment text, or only vote totals? The answer decides whether you can notify requesters from the new tool.

Destination	What its own docs say about moving data from Canny	Caveat
Featurebase	Marketing promises a one-click migration of feedback, changelogs and users. The help center describes a CSV importer (title, content, board, status, vote total, author name and email, tags, created date) and an assisted API migration on paid plans that can include posts, comments, voters, user data and changelogs	The CSV importer does not rebuild individual voter relationships from a vote total, and an imported total does not create identified customers who can receive updates
UserVoice	A generic CSV import of ideas (title, description, category, date, creator, statuses, labels; 50,000-row limit), plus a voters and feedback import and an API	We did not find a Canny-specific importer, so you map the columns yourself
Productboard, Savio	Our research did not cover their import paths	Ask their support what a Canny import carries before you commit
Sleekplan, UserJot	Say they offer a Canny migration	Vendor claims we did not check against their help centers
Linear Customer Requests	Intake comes from Intercom, Zendesk, Front, Slack, Asks, Salesforce, email and the API	We found no competitor-board importer in its docs. Canny has its own two-way Linear sync if you want to keep both
Modem	Connects to Canny and imports history when an admin starts the backfill	Vote counts only, no voter list. See the section below

We could not read vendor pages directly during research, so these rows come from vendor-domain search results. Re-read the linked page before you rely on a row.

The migration checklist

Use this with any destination.

Decide the scope. List your boards and count posts by status. Most teams do not need every closed post in the new tool. A sensible cut is open posts, anything planned or in progress, and anything tied to revenue. The rest can stay in the archive.
Export before you cancel. Run the board CSV for every board. Export the voter list for each post you will notify people about, which means at least everything open, planned or in progress. Pull comments, votes and companies from the API if you want the threads. Canny documents service continuing to the end of your billing cycle and an option to downgrade to Free, but we could not find what happens to your data and admin access after a downgrade. Export first as a precaution. Do not delete the workspace until step 4 passes, because deleting a workspace removes its data permanently.
Store the export privately. Voter and author data contain customer emails. Keep the files in a private drive. If you track anything in a repo or tracker, confirm it is private before you paste customer names or emails into it.
Spot-check the export. Pick three posts of different sizes. Compare the vote count, comment count and status with the live board. Do this while the live board still exists.
Map the fields. Write down where each Canny field lands: status, board or category, tags, owner, vote count, comments, and the MRR column if you use it. Statuses are where mapping most often goes wrong. Canny lets you add custom statuses, and a destination may have no equivalent. Pick a fallback for each one.
Decide who gets told. For every post you will notify on, you need its voters as people with email addresses in the new tool. If the destination only took vote totals, those people are not there, so keep the voter-list export and plan to notify them from your own records. How to close the feedback loop covers the process.
Run a trial import. Load 10 to 20 posts, including one with many votes and one with a long comment thread. Check votes, comments, authors, status and links. Fix the mapping, then run the full import.
Run the full import and re-check. Compare against your export: posts per status, and the vote totals of your five largest posts.
Plan the cutover. Pick a cutover date and stop sending new feedback to Canny on that date. Then export everything created or updated since your first export (posts, comments and votes) and import that delta, so requests that arrived during the migration aren't lost. Find every place that links to the Canny board: your app, docs, support macros, release notes, onboarding emails. If you use a custom domain, repoint it to the new tool or to a short "we moved" page. Canny emails voters by default when a post's status changes (there is a "Notify all voters" checkbox), so a status change with a note is one way to reach them before you leave. Check that setting first so you know who will be emailed.
Tell people. Post the move on the board with the new address and a date. After the import, notify voters on anything planned or in progress, from the new tool or from your own records, so no one assumes the request died.
Cancel last. Cancel after you have verified the export, confirmed the redirect resolves, and heard back from at least one real voter that the new link works. Keep the export archive.

If your voters do not come across, the checklist has not failed. That is the normal result of a vote-total import, and step 6 is the plan for it.

If the destination is not another board: Modem

If you are leaving because a board only holds what someone typed into it, the alternative is to read the conversations instead. Modem reads Slack, Discord, support tools, email and call transcripts, and groups reports of the same thing into topics by meaning, with the people and companies behind them. It also ingests Canny as a source, so your board history joins those topics. See the Canny integration docs.

How the Canny import works:

Connect. An org owner or admin pastes the Canny workspace API key in Settings, Integrations, Canny. Canny has no API for registering webhooks, so an admin also pastes the webhook URL Modem shows into Canny's Settings, API & Webhooks. Nothing arrives until that is done. You need a Canny plan with API and webhook access, and admin access in both products.
Backfill. Importing history is optional, and an admin starts it from the Canny card in settings. It does not run on connect. It takes full post history with no date cutoff, up to 10,000 posts across all boards and up to 500 comments per post. A workspace above the cap is not imported in full, and a large one takes a while because posts are fetched in pages. You can re-run it, and it does not duplicate posts.
Every board. Modem captures all boards in the workspace. There is no picker.
What carries over. Posts (title, body, images), comments, the current status mapped to a Modem state (Open and Under review become Open, Planned becomes Waiting, In progress stays In progress, Complete becomes Done, Closed becomes Canceled), the current vote count, board, category and tags as of capture, and authors who have an email, who are matched to people by that email.
What does not. The voter list, and custom Canny statuses as states (they are kept on the post). Deleted posts and comments stay in Modem. Tag changes after capture are ignored. The public board, its URLs, redirects, changelog, roadmap and voter emails do not move, because Modem has none of those.
Read-only. Modem never writes to Canny, so it cannot update a status or email your voters.

Run the backfill before you cancel, as a precaution. It reads through Canny's API with your workspace key, and we do not know what Canny does to API access once a plan ends. After it runs, the history stays in Modem even if you disconnect. Because the connection is read-only, you can also leave Canny up as your public board while Modem reads it, and retire the board later.

We built it read-only because Modem is not the board. Canny stays the system of record for votes and status, and Modem's job is to put those posts next to what customers say everywhere else. When an admin runs the backfill, it covers the board's full history rather than a recent window, because a board's value is its history and a 30-day window would pull in only a sliver of a years-old board. Connecting alone only captures new activity, so run the backfill if you want the history.

Two limits matter for a migration. First, Modem does not import the voter list, so to tell old voters their request shipped you still need Canny's voter export, and the notification itself comes from your own tools. Second, Modem has no public voting board or roadmap. If customers vote in public or expect a roadmap page, pick a board destination from the table above, or keep Canny and let Modem read it. Modem's priority is an AI-assigned score that weighs severity, how many companies are affected, how often a topic recurs and more, so it is not a vote count under another name.

Choosing between another board and no board

This is the decision teams skip. If customers use the board and you want public voting and a public roadmap, move to another board and use the checklist. Our Canny alternatives guide compares the options. If your team lives in Linear and the real issue is statuses drifting out of date, syncing Canny into Linear may solve it without a move. If the real problem is that feedback arrives in support threads and Slack channels and not on the board, another board repeats the gap. Why voting boards fail covers when that applies, and Modem as a Canny alternative covers where we fit and where a public roadmap is the better tool. Canny's Autopilot also pulls feedback from tools like Gong, Intercom, Slack and Zendesk into posts, so check whether it already covers your sources before you blame the board.

FAQ

Does Canny have a built-in migration tool?

We did not find a "migrate to X" wizard in Canny's help center, which covers export, import and API articles. Canny does offer a CSV post import into Canny. Destination vendors publish their own Canny migration pages, and what they carry varies.

Can I export who voted from Canny?

Yes. Open a post's voter list and use "Export List", or call the API's votes/list. The board CSV only has the total score.

Do comments come out in the Canny CSV?

No. The board CSV has a comment count, not comment text. Pull comments from the API with comments/list.

Will votes carry over to Featurebase?

The CSV importer carries a vote total per post, not individual voters, and the total does not create identified customers who can receive updates. Featurebase's help center says an assisted API migration on paid plans can include posts, comments, voters, user data and changelogs. Confirm the current terms with Featurebase.

Should I export before I cancel Canny?

Yes. Canny documents service running to the end of the billing cycle and a downgrade-to-Free option, but we could not find what happens to data and admin access after a downgrade. Treat the export as a precaution and verify it before you cancel.

Can Modem import my Canny board?

Yes. When an admin starts the backfill, Modem imports full post history across all boards, up to 10,000 posts and 500 comments per post, including comments, status, vote counts and authors with emails. It does not import voter lists and never writes to Canny.

What happens to my public board URL when I leave Canny?

Nothing happens automatically. Redirect any custom domain yourself and update the places that link to the board. Modem has no public board to host it.