Comparison · Self-hosted vs Managed

Hearthside vs EasyRetro

EasyRetro is $25/mo (Team). Hearthside is a self-hosted alternative at $0.99/mo. Here's when each makes sense.

At a glance

	Hearthside	EasyRetro
Hosting	Self-hosted, your infra	Managed SaaS (cloud only)
Data location	Your server, your disk	EasyRetro's cloud
Free tier	3 retros	Paid only
Pro pricing	$0.99/mo	$25/mo (Team)
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 Hearthside

Pick Hearthside when you want simplicity and ownership.

Self-hosted — retro data stays private
$0.99/mo vs $25/mo
No per-user limits
Single binary

Hearthside 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/hearthside/install.sh | sh

Install Hearthside Hearthside docs

When EasyRetro fits better

EasyRetro makes sense when you need more.

Polished real-time collaboration
Timer and voting built in
Ice breaker activities
Integrations with Jira and Trello

EasyRetro is the most popular retro tool with polished real-time collaboration. If your team runs retros weekly, EasyRetro's templates and voting make it smooth. For self-hosted retros where discussion data stays private, Hearthside covers the essentials.

The trade-off

Choosing between Hearthside and EasyRetro is less about which tool is better and more about what kind of infrastructure you want to maintain. EasyRetro at $25/mo (Team) handles hosting, backups, and uptime for you. Hearthside at $0.99/mo shifts that responsibility to you — but also shifts the control. If you already run servers, Hearthside adds negligible operational burden. If you do not, EasyRetro removes it entirely.

Technical differences

Architecturally, Hearthside and EasyRetro could not be more different. EasyRetro runs on distributed cloud infrastructure with load balancers, managed databases, CDNs, and redundancy across availability zones. Hearthside is a single process writing to a single file on a single disk. That sounds fragile until you realize that SQLite handles more concurrent readers than most web applications will ever need, and WAL mode means reads never block writes.

Migration path

The migration path from EasyRetro depends on how much history you need to bring over. If you only need active records, a manual re-entry through Hearthside's dashboard might be faster than writing a migration script. If you need full history, export from EasyRetro and use Hearthside's POST API to import records. Either way, the process is measured in hours, not weeks.

FAQ

Is Hearthside an EasyRetro alternative?

EasyRetro has polished real-time collaboration and voting. Hearthside is a simpler self-hosted retro tool.

Does Hearthside support real-time collaboration?

Pro tier includes real-time mode. For polished facilitation tools, EasyRetro is more refined.

Hearthside overview

Get started

Self-hosted team retrospective tool in 30 seconds.

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

Install Hearthside All 150 tools for $29/mo →