A public board where people post ideas and vote is one table, one form, and a vote count. There's very little hiding underneath a feedback board.
Build it
Effort: an eveningRunning cost: $0/mo to start
Why CanICodeThis says Build it
A post with a title, description, and status (open/planned/done) is standard CRUD
Upvoting is a join table between users and posts, with a count
Sorting by votes or recency is a straightforward query
The parts that'll cause problems
A public roadmap view linking completed items back to a changelog is real product polish beyond the raw board
Merging duplicate requests together (and their votes) is a small but fiddly feature
Embedding the board seamlessly inside your own product needs a bit of integration work
How I'd build this
frontend
Astro or Next.js
database
Turso (SQLite)
auth
Simple email or social login
hosting
Cloudflare Pages
MVP scope
Submit a feedback post with title and description
Upvote posts (one vote per user)
Admin sets a status: open, planned, in progress, done
Sort by votes or newest
Postpone to v2
A public roadmap view
Merge duplicate posts
Embeddable widget for your own product
What it actually costs to build
AI agent — with a subscription (Claude Pro/Max, Cursor, etc.)
$0 marginal
AI agent — pay-per-use API, no subscription
$16–$27 one-time
Hosting, once it's running
$0/mo (free tier)
Domain name, if you want your own
~$12/yr
Existing tools solving a similar problem typically run $79–$79/mo — see how they compare below.
The build prompt
Genuinely one of the simpler builds in this library:
1. Submit a feedback post with a title and description — ordinary CRUD.
2. Upvote posts via a join table between users and posts, one vote per user enforced by a unique constraint.
3. An admin sets a status (open, planned, in progress, done) visible to everyone.
4. Sort by votes or newest — a simple ORDER BY.
That's a real, complete public feedback board. Simple auth (email or social login) is enough to enforce one vote per user — no need for anything heavier. Out of scope: a public roadmap view grouping posts by status visually, real, separate presentation work, and merging duplicate posts together (moving their votes), a small but genuinely fiddly feature.