NOTE: As of May 8th, 2025, we have changed our pricing. Older plans may be mentioned in the video above. You can view our current pricing and plan information on our pricing page at canny.io/pricing.
Overview
Comments help you communicate directly with users and collaborate internally with your team. If someone has used social media before, commenting in Canny will feel familiar.
Types of comments
1. Public comments
Public comments are visible to anyone with access to that board, both end-users and fellow Canny admins:
Public comments can be added from the Canny portal or via the Feedback tab in Canny:
When a Canny admin publicly comments on a post, the post's author and all voters will be notified of that comment via email
A direct reply will only email the user being responded to
2. Internal comments
Internal comments are only visible to fellow Canny teammates listed on the Admins page in your Canny settings. End-users will not see any internal comments:
To add an internal comment in Canny Ideas (currently in beta), switch the idea to the internal view. This enables the internal comments area:
Teammates who are @mentioned will receive an email, and they will also see a notification the next time they log into Canny
Internal comments are only available on paid plans
Comments by admins (whether public or internal) are not added as insights to Ideas
3. Private comments
You can also make end-user comments private. With this setting on, only Canny admins will be able to see comments submitted by your end-users. End-users will not be able to see each other’s comments. This is a board-level setting, so make sure to turn it on for each board where you'd like to have private comments.
This can be enabled from the Boards tab in your Canny settings using the "Show comments publicly" toggle:
4. Insights (only in the Canny Ideas beta)
When an end-user comments on a post, the idea linked to that comment will be copied as an insight on that idea. As mentioned above, comments made by admins are not added as insights:
Summarize comments
When a post goes above 10 comments, the Summarize button will appear on the post view:
View in Canny Ideas:
This will generate a summary of the post's full comment thread as powered by Canny Autopilot:
Summaries can be repeated as more comments are added, but you can only summarize each post once per day.
Comment summaries are available on the Pro and Business plans.
Notifications
Teammates will be emailed when:
Another teammate mentions them in an internal comment
Someone replies to a comment they've made
End-users will be emailed when:
An admin comments on a post they wrote or voted on
Someone replies to a comment they made
Markdown formatting
Comments (both internal and public) support Markdown if you want to format your text:
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