However, creating and maintaining the list of changes to keep the customers on the same page as the dev team is a time-hogging and labor-intensive procedure. It requires days of planning and delving through the tickets manually to create the release notes. Thus, this detail-oriented process often delays the timely release of updates and, more often than not, results in miscommunication. Late releases and dissatisfied customers are the aftermaths of this unplanned process. To tackle the problems arising in this craziness-loaded process and to encourage the customers so that they engage and give their feedback about the new releases, companies are adopting the changelog tools. This systematic and hassle-free approach of keeping the customers informed about the latest products and updates using the Changelogs and ReleaseNotes induces customer retention in the long run.
What is a changelog? š
A changelog is a sequential record of all the changes and updates made by the dev team in a software product. Companies find publishing changelogs a more convenient and structured way of informing their customers about the newly launched releases. Apart from the customers, the changelogs also benefit the development and marketing teams of the companies as they are aware of the new features being introduced in the new updates they were not involved in. Changelogs are software solutions that offer a platform to craft and publish your changelogs, eliminating the need to add the release notes manually. Creating and publishing the changelogs for every software product release is essential owing to the following reasons:
Keep your customers informed that you periodically update your products to improve them, and subscribing to your product will offer them great value. Gain your customerās trust and improve user retention by informing them about the newly introduced features and why they are required. Share the updates with your customers proactively so that users can try out the new features and improve the feature adoption rate.
Below we have listed a few changelog tools. Keep scrolling to check them out, and then you will be free to decide the best one out of all the tools listed here.
Changefeed
Changefeed is a popular tool that comes in handy to craft mesmerizing changelogs of your clientās products super quickly and without any hassle. Software is built with the sole intention to keep the customers up-to-date on the latest releases and changes made by the development team in the product to be delivered. The changelogs built through Changefeed are engaging enough to keep the customers involved in the business. Changefeed is intuitive, and its advanced release editor comes in handy to add, order, and edit the changes. The tool contains an inbuilt list of tried and tested tips and tricks that educate you to make the best use of the platform. Changefeed also supports markdown, used to put together all the updates and schedule them to release at a particular time. Users can integrate the changelog with tons of apps and third-party tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Mailchimp, and GitHub. It also prompts your customers to subscribe to the changelog newsletter and receive updates directly in the inbox. Changefeed offers three pricing plans starting at USD 49 per month to fit your business needs.
Beamer
Keep your customers engaged and updated effortlessly with Beamer, another changelog tool. You can use Beamer to announce the latest releases and capture customer feedback thanks to the sophisticated notification center and in-built widgets it flaunts. Beamer is available as an embeddable widget that can be installed within an app or on your website through which users can receive contextual announcements. Besides this, you can also make a Standalone webpage with Beamer that will consist of a custom domain, and you can also optimize it according to SEO standards. Beamer consists of the following features that make it a perfect changelog tool:
The changelog lets you post the latest products updates with your customers through text, images, videos, and even gifs, thus driving more customer engagement. Want to make announcements at a particular time to drive more traffic? Beamer lets you schedule the posts for a specific day and time. Beamer enables you to make the announcements to only a group of users and target them based on behavior, location, and demographics. The push notification feature is an excellent choice to direct the customerās attention towards your app or website. Beamer automatically creates notifications for any new posts.
You can use Beamer for free if you have to use it personally. However, you can always upgrade to any of three paid plans starting at USD 49.
Olvy
Next, we have Olvy, a powerful changelog tool that enables you to make release notes and announce the new features added to the software through the beautiful and intuitive in-app widgets and pages. You can receive feedback from your customers, and Olvy will convert them into actionable insights for you. The notable features of Olvy are as follows:
In-App Widgets: Includes multiple release note widgets like modal, sidebar, and embedded style. Stand-Alone Page: Olvy contains a dedicated space to announce new features, updates, bug fixes, software-related news, and more. Elegant Release Editor: You can create and edit the release notes using the features housed in the Release Editor. Dashboard: It also contains a dashboard that lets you analyze the performance of the releases. Feedback on Releases: The reactions and comments section let your users express their opinions about the releases. Sentiment Analysis: Olvy also has a sentiment analysis feature to analyze the comments and the emotions. API integration support: It also supports API integration that makes it possible to integrate Olvy with other tools. Olvy has excellent customer support through in-detailed guides and tutorials. Thanks to the multi-user support, it is possible to invite teammates to collaborate and celebrate the new releases.
Olvy offers a free forever version for a single user, but they can always upgrade to the premium version costing USD 24 per month.
ReleaseNotes
Use the ReleaseNotes tool to carve appealing release notes to keep your customers updated about the changes made to the products and, as a result, make better conversions as publishing the updates make your brand more trusted and valued. It can be a perfect tool to keep the remote teams, customer support teams, and marketing teams in the loop about the changes made in the products. ReleaseNotes offers tons of intuitive features that make it a celebrated changelog tool. Some of them are as follows:
Using ReleaseNotes, you can integrate a responsive and customizable release banner on your website that depicts the changes included in the release. Once added, it automatically updates itself when new releases are rolled out. ReleaseNotes marks the new releases as unread, and a counter mentions the number of unread releases. This way, customers are aware that they are missing out a lot. It supports an embedded widget that can integrate the release notes within the website. This way, users will not be sent away to another location to check out the new releases. It also includes a Private Release Notes feature where users need to authenticate themselves before accessing the private or internal release notes.
ReleaseNotes offers two pricing plans that can easily adjust with any project size.
AnnounceKit
AnnounceKit is a user communication platform that empowers you to publicize new product updates to accelerate the feature adoption rate, improve user satisfaction and increase revenue. Being an omnichannel product announcement platform, Announcekit lets you announce updates in your app with a catchy notification. You can also keep a historical record of all the changelogs on a webpage where users can find all the updates in one place. The changelog tool also lets you target the customers not currently on your domain so that you gain back their attention. You can reach out to the customers directly in their mailboxes or within their slack workspace. AnnounceKit supports the following powerful features so that you can make high geared release announcements:
Are you releasing an update that you donāt want users to miss? With the boosters feature, gain your audienceās attention on critical announcements. Instead of sending all the release updates to all the users, you are free to target the users on their job role, location, past events, or any other factor. If you have an international presence, you can use AnnounceKit to craft updates in multiple languages and even publish translation to deliver a localized experience that users certainly love. You can also know the userās opinion about the update from the comment section or the emojis reacted by them.
AnnounceKit offers four pricing plans for different team sizes. The smallest one starts from USD 49 per month.
Frill
Frill is an all-in-one platform offering a systematic way to collect feedback from customers and make product-related announcements to them. Its announcement feature is a variant of the changelog tool that can be used to brief customers about the newly released features. Frillās announcement widget has a stunning user interface making it very captivating. It is possible to embed the announcement feature into any platform or your website with just a few lines of code. Being a SaaS product, you can embed the widget directly into your website or use our platform as a changelog tool- whatever appeals to you. Its widget offers a great deal of speed thanks to the ease of use. Announcements also let you attach photos, videos, and ideas in the new release notes. Its other features are listed down below:
The SSO integration lets you integrate Frill directly on your website to offer an unmatched user experience. It also supports translation, making it possible to translate the updates to the local language. You can customize Frill by adding your brand colors to make it look more intricate. Frill supports an inline admin dashboard so that you can manage all the announcements from one place. Increase the engagement rate on the new updates by sending automatic emails to your customers.
Frill is free for small companies, but they can always upgrade to the paid versions starting from USD 25 to enjoy additional features.
LaunchNotes
LaunchNotes is a popular changelog platform offering an automated and personalized way of delivering updates to customers and teammates and keeping them involved in the development life cycle. The public LaunchNotes update page houses the changelog and the release notes, making it possible to craft beautiful and engaging announcements that can easily capture the usersā attention. Apart from releasing the updates, you can also use LaunchNotes to tease the upcoming features, launch the beta programs, and share the future roadmap with your customers to earn their loyalty and trust. The features of this sophisticated changelog are as follows:
Want to share the new release only with a few customers? Thanks to the private LaunchNotes page, you can send sensitive updates to only a few stakeholders. Use the Private Roadmap to keep your important customers involved in the development life cycle from the initial stage. Plan launches of the products to offer streamlined workflow and save time, thereby ditching chaos. Classify product updates so that users can be aware of the updates that interest them and ignore those not concerning them. Accept customer feedback for each release and development phase to make more informed decisions. The widget can be added to an app or the website to broadcast the announcements just made.
LaunchNotes offers three pricing plans that suit your business needs. The basic plan offering limited features costs USD 24 per month.
ReleaseNotesHub
ReleaseNotesHub is a leading SaaS solution managing release notes of your software and products. Unlike the other changelog tools weāve listed here, RnHub is a sort of community that handles the release notes of your favorite products. It acts as a centralized platform on which you can engage with your customers on the platform they prefer, such as Slack, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Due to the vast number of features it has to offer, companies of all sizes and industries are adopting RnHub rapidly. ReleaseNotesHub enables you to fully automate the release of updates as it can skilfully pull or capture the details from a task management system. You can permit it to automatically receive content from TFS, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jira, and Asana. Your customers and stakeholders can follow the product they care about, and they will receive a notification when a new release is rolled out or whenever a new feature is added to the product. Unlike any other changelog tool listed here, you get an option to like or dislike the release to voice your opinion. Customers can also view the previous releases and compare them or filter the release notes. Despite the awesome features it has to offer, as of now, ReleaseNotesHub is free to use.
Wrapping Up šļø
Changelogs have become an essential part of companies because they offer a fast and secure method to broadcast the releases to the stakeholders. They keep the customers constantly engaged in the development cycle, thereby boosting the trust. So choose a suitable one for yourself from the ones mentioned above and keep your customers in the loop!
