Fizzy went open source last week. If you're evaluating kanban boards right now, that timing puts an interesting question on the table: do you self-host an open source tool, or use a managed platform? Here's an honest breakdown — including where we think Fizzy makes sense and where iKanBan is the better choice.
What Is Fizzy?
Fizzy is an open-source kanban board project. It recently went public on GitHub, making the full source available for inspection, contribution, and self-hosting. For teams with strong data sovereignty requirements or a philosophical preference for open-source software, that's meaningful.
Self-hosting means you control the server, the database, the backups, and the uptime. It also means you're responsible for all of those things.
What Is iKanBan?
iKanBan is a fully managed kanban board platform. Sign up at app.ikanban.org and you have a board in under 60 seconds. We handle the infrastructure, security patches, SSL certificates, database backups, and uptime. The Starter plan is free forever. Pro is $9/month flat for a team of 25.
Beyond the core kanban functionality, iKanBan is built for developer workflows: a full REST API with API key authentication, a WebSocket event stream, unlimited automation rules on Pro, swimlanes, and a native AI agent skill for LLM pipelines.
Setup and Time to First Board
Fizzy: Clone the repository. Set up a database. Configure environment variables. Run migrations. Set up a reverse proxy with SSL. Configure backups. Then deal with updates, security patches, and incidents when they happen.
If you have a Kubernetes cluster and a platform engineer, this is a Saturday afternoon project. If you're a five-person startup with one overloaded backend developer, this is a tax on time that doesn't ship product.
iKanBan: Sign up. Create a board. Done. There's nothing to deploy, maintain, or patch.
Total Cost of Ownership
"Open source" means the software is free. The infrastructure is not. A self-hosted kanban board running on a minimal VPS still costs money, and more importantly, it costs ops time — which is the most expensive resource in any engineering org.
| Cost Factor | Fizzy (Self-Hosted) | iKanBan |
|---|---|---|
| Software license | Free | Free (Starter) |
| Infrastructure | VPS + storage + bandwidth | Included |
| SSL / TLS | You manage it | Included |
| Backups | You manage it | Included |
| Security patches | You apply them | We ship them |
| Uptime responsibility | You're on call | We're on call |
| Pro features (API, automations) | Build them yourself | $9/month flat |
For most teams, the honest answer is that self-hosting isn't "free" — it's paying with engineering time instead of money.
REST API and Developer Features
This is an area where the comparison is concrete. iKanBan ships a documented REST API with API key authentication, full CRUD on all board entities, a WebSocket event stream, and a native AI agent skill. These are production features running today with rate limiting, authentication, and versioning.
Fizzy's API surface depends on the current state of the repository and what you're willing to build on top of. For teams who want to integrate CI/CD pipelines, AI agents, or custom dashboards, iKanBan provides a finished API. Fizzy provides source code you can build from.
Security and Compliance
Fizzy: You control the data, which is the upside. Your team's data never leaves your infrastructure. That matters for teams in regulated industries or with strong data sovereignty policies. The downside: you're also responsible for authentication security, input validation, dependency updates, and incident response.
iKanBan: We run hardened HTTPS across all domains, enforce security headers (HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options), operate under our Privacy Policy, and handle security reviews. Our infrastructure doesn't expose non-existent paths or server identity headers. For most teams, managed security is more secure in practice than self-managed security — not because self-hosting is inherently insecure, but because maintaining it requires consistent attention.
When Fizzy Makes Sense
- Your organization has strict data residency requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, government regulations)
- You have an existing infrastructure team and want to contribute to or fork the codebase
- You philosophically prefer open-source and have the ops capacity to support it
- You want to customize the UI or data model beyond what a SaaS allows
When iKanBan Makes Sense
- You want to start in under a minute with no infrastructure to set up
- You're running AI agents or LLM pipelines that need a first-class API
- You want flat, predictable pricing that doesn't scale per-seat
- You'd rather focus on your product than maintain a kanban board deployment
- You want managed security without having to think about it
The Bottom Line
Fizzy going open source is genuinely good for the ecosystem — more kanban tooling is better, and open-source projects raise the quality bar for everyone. If your team has the ops capacity and wants full data control, it's worth evaluating.
But for the majority of teams — especially those building with AI agents, integrating CI/CD pipelines, or just wanting to ship work without maintaining infrastructure — iKanBan is the faster path to a production-ready kanban board with a first-class developer experience.
The question isn't "open source vs SaaS." It's "what is the best use of our team's time?" For most teams, it's not maintaining a kanban server.