Comparison · Self-hosted vs Managed

Branding Iron vs Beamer

Beamer is $49/mo (Starter). Branding Iron is a self-hosted alternative at $0.99/mo. Here's when each makes sense.

Try Branding Iron Free Branding Iron overview

At a glance

	Branding Iron	Beamer
Hosting	Self-hosted, your infra	Managed SaaS (cloud only)
Data location	Your server, your disk	Beamer's cloud
Free tier	10 posts	Paid only
Pro pricing	$0.99/mo	$49/mo (Starter)
Dependencies	None (single binary + SQLite)	N/A (managed)
Setup time	~30 seconds	Account signup
Dashboard	Built-in at /ui	Cloud dashboard
License	BSL 1.1	Proprietary SaaS

When to use Branding Iron

Pick Branding Iron when you want simplicity and ownership.

Self-hosted — changelog data on your server
$0.99/mo vs $49/mo
No per-user or per-view pricing
Single binary, embeddable widget

Branding Iron is a single Go binary with embedded SQLite. Install it with one command, and you are running in under a minute. Your data stays on your server.

curl -fsSL https://stockyard.dev/brandingiron/install.sh | sh

Install Branding Iron Branding Iron docs

When Beamer fits better

Beamer makes sense when you need more.

In-app notification widget with segmentation
NPS surveys and feedback collection
Push notifications to users
A/B testing for announcements

Beamer is a product communication platform — changelog, in-app notifications, NPS, and feedback. If you need all of that, Beamer is well-designed. If you just need a changelog and release notes page, Branding Iron does that for $0.99/mo.

Making the decision

Teams evaluating Beamer alongside Branding Iron tend to split on two axes: feature depth and data residency. Beamer wins on feature depth — it is a mature product with integrations, mobile apps, and a dedicated support team. Branding Iron wins on residency — your release notes manager data lives on your server in a SQLite file you can inspect, back up, and migrate without asking anyone for permission.

How they differ under the hood

Branding Iron runs as a single static binary with an embedded SQLite database. There is no application server, no cache layer, no background worker. One process handles HTTP requests and reads from and writes to the database file directly. This simplicity is the entire point — fewer moving parts means fewer things that can break at 2 AM.

Switching from Beamer

Moving from Beamer does not have to be all-or-nothing. Some teams run Branding Iron for new data while keeping Beamer as a read-only archive of historical records. The API makes it straightforward to build a sync script if you need both systems to reflect the same data during a transition period.

FAQ

Is Branding Iron a Beamer alternative?

Beamer is a full product communication platform. Branding Iron focuses on release notes and changelogs as a self-hosted tool.

Does Branding Iron have an in-app widget?

Pro tier includes an embeddable changelog widget. For in-app notifications with segmentation, Beamer is more capable.

Branding Iron overview

Get started

Self-hosted release notes manager in 30 seconds.

Single binary. Free to start. $0.99/mo for Pro.

Install Branding Iron All 150 tools for $29/mo →