Wakelog vs Beamer
Beamer (getbeamer.com) isn't really a changelog tool — it's an engagement suite: announcements, notification center, NPS surveys, push notifications, segmentation, feedback. If your product-marketing team wants all of that, Beamer is a fair buy. If you searched Beamer alternative because you wanted the changelog part without the suite, the price tag, or the script weight, that's the gap Wakelog sits in.
What Beamer does well
- Reach tooling. Segmentation, email digests to subscribers, push notifications, in-app targeting — genuinely useful for marketing-led announcement programs, and Wakelog deliberately does none of it.
- Feedback loop. Reactions plus comments plus NPS in one place.
- Polish. Mature product with lots of display options.
Where Wakelog is different
- Scope. Wakelog is just the changelog: public page, feeds, widget, API. Nothing to configure that you didn't ask for.
- Weight. Beamer's widget brings an engagement platform's JavaScript onto your page. Wakelog's widget is a small script and an iframe, with no tracking of your visitors — see privacy.
- Price. Beamer's free tier is limited, with the real product behind paid plans (fair — it's a big product). Wakelog is free, full stop.
- Automation. Post from CI, a git tag, or a release webhook. Your changelog updates itself when you ship.
Side by side
| Feature | Wakelog | Beamer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — no paid tier at all right now | Limited free tier; paid plans unlock the suite (last we checked) |
| Scope | Changelog only, done well | Announcements + notification center + NPS + feedback + push |
| Signup | Username + password. No email address, ever | Email account required |
| Post from CI / API | Full API + CLI + GitHub/GitLab release webhooks — everything the UI does | API exists on paid tiers (check current docs) |
| "What’s new" widget | Yes — popover with unread badge, one script tag, no tracking | Yes — feature-rich, heavier scripts, Beamer branding on free tier |
| Email to subscribers | No email sending (your RSS/JSON feed plugs into Buttondown, Mailchimp, etc.) | Yes — built-in, one of its main features |
| Segmentation / targeting | No — one public stream per project (use multiple projects for audiences) | Yes — a core feature |
| Reader privacy | Zero cookies, zero scripts, zero analytics for your readers | Engagement analytics are the point of the product |
| Export / lock-in | Whole history back as markdown with one GET — no export request form | Check current docs before committing |
When you should still pick Beamer
- You have a product-marketing team that will actually use segmentation, targeting, and email campaigns. Don't rebuild those on top of a minimal tool.
- You want NPS and feedback collection in the same widget.
Switching
Get your announcement history into markdown (title + date per entry is enough), preview it with the no-signup importer, and keep the Beamer widget up until the Wakelog page is live so there's no gap. The migration guide has the step-by-step, and the product update emails guide shows how to keep an email channel going with your feed plus any newsletter tool.
Start your free changelog Preview yours without signing up →
Notes on Beamer reflect their public pricing and feature pages when we last checked (updated 2026-07-31). If something here is outdated or unfair, it's a bug — we'll fix it. See also the full comparison · vs Headway · vs LaunchNotes · vs AnnounceKit · vs Canny · vs GitHub Releases.