Open any changelog tool’s marketing page. Count how many times you see “engagement,” “announcement,” and “boost.” Now count how many times you see “git,” “commit,” or “release workflow.”
I’ll wait.
The ratio tells you everything about who these tools were built for—and it wasn’t you.
The Dashboard That Says It All
Here’s a fun exercise. Sign up for a trial of any popular changelog tool. The first thing you’ll notice isn’t a CLI command or an API endpoint. It’s a WYSIWYG editor asking you to write a “catchy headline” and pick an emoji.
The metrics dashboard? All about reads, clicks, and “engagement rates.” There’s usually a prominent feature to “boost” your announcement—because nothing says “developer tool” like paying extra to show your changelog more aggressively.
Meanwhile, the things you actually care about are buried three menus deep:
– Git integration? “Coming soon” (for the last two years)
– Automated changelog from commits? “Contact sales”
– API-first workflow? Here’s a rate-limited REST endpoint and good luck
These tools weren’t built to solve your problems. They were built to solve marketing’s problems. You’re just the one who has to use them.
The Tell: Pricing Models That Punish Scale
Most changelog tools charge per “tracked user” or “monthly active visitor.” Think about that for a second.
You ship a bug fix. Your changelog tool counts every person who saw the notification. Your bill goes up. You ship more frequently—like a good developer should—and your bill goes up faster.
One popular tool charges $79/month for 250 users. Want 1,000 users? That’s $661/month. Unlimited? Talk to enterprise sales for a five-figure annual contract.
This pricing model makes perfect sense if you’re a marketing team sending occasional campaign-style announcements. It’s actively hostile if you’re a dev team shipping daily.
The math is simple: these tools were priced for marketers who send 2-3 polished announcements per month, not developers who push to prod twice a day.
What Marketers Wanted vs. What Developers Need
Let’s be specific about the mismatch.
Marketers wanted:
– A place to write “exciting” product announcements
– User engagement metrics
– Segmentation to target different customer groups
– Email campaigns tied to releases
– A/B testing for changelog headlines (yes, this exists)
Developers need:
– Automated changelog generation from git history
– A CLI that fits into CI/CD pipelines
– API-first design for custom integrations
– Semantic versioning support
– The ability to ship updates without context-switching into a marketing tool
I’m not saying marketing concerns are invalid. Good release communication matters. But when every feature decision prioritizes engagement metrics over developer workflow, you end up with tools that look great in a marketing demo and feel terrible in daily use.
The WYSIWYG Tax
Every time you use a marketing-first changelog tool, you pay a hidden tax: context switching.
You’ve just finished a feature. Tests pass. PR merged. Now you need to:
1. Open a completely different tool
2. Navigate to the changelog editor
3. Write prose in a WYSIWYG editor designed for non-technical users
4. Pick a category, maybe add an emoji
5. Schedule or publish
6. Hope you didn’t forget anything
Multiply this by every release. The friction adds up.
The alternative—what a developer-first tool would offer—looks like:
1. `releasepad changelog –from-commits`
2. Review the generated draft
3. `releasepad publish`
Same outcome. Fraction of the time. No emoji picker required.
The Git History You Already Have
Here’s the thing that really gets me: your git history already contains your changelog. It’s sitting right there.
Commit messages. PR descriptions. Release tags. Jira ticket references. Every piece of information needed to generate a meaningful changelog already exists in your workflow.
A tool built by developers would start there. It would parse your commits, understand conventional commit formats, link to your issue tracker, and draft something sensible. You’d edit for clarity and publish.
A tool built by marketers ignores all of this. It gives you a blank page and asks you to remember what you shipped last week.
Real Talk: Why This Happened
It’s not malice. It’s market dynamics.
Most changelog tools started as features within larger “product management” or “customer feedback” platforms. The buyers were PMs and marketing leads—people who control software budgets and care about customer engagement metrics.
Developers? We’re not usually the ones with purchasing authority. We’re the ones who get handed tools and told to use them.
So these tools optimized for the buyer, not the user. Classic B2B SaaS. The demo looks impressive. The dashboard has pretty graphs. The pricing scales with “value delivered” (engagement).
And developers quietly suffer, or more commonly, just stop writing changelogs altogether.
The Real Cost: Changelogs That Don’t Get Written
Here’s the outcome nobody talks about: when changelog tools are painful to use, changelogs don’t get written.
The feature ships. Someone says “we should update the changelog.” Everyone agrees. Nobody does it. The tool requires too much friction, so the task gets deferred until “later.”
Later never comes.
Users end up reading release notes that say “Bug fixes and performance improvements”—if they’re lucky. Or the changelog is six months out of date. Or it only covers the big marketing-approved features while dozens of meaningful improvements go unmentioned.
Marketing-optimized tools created the very problem they claim to solve: users don’t know what changed because the tools made documenting changes too painful.
What Developer-First Actually Looks Like
I have opinions about this, obviously. But here’s what I think matters:
Workflow integration over standalone dashboards. The tool should meet developers where they work: terminal, CI/CD, git. Not in a separate web app that requires context switching.
Automation over manual entry. Start from git commits, PRs, and issue trackers. Generate drafts. Let humans edit for clarity rather than writing from scratch.
API-first design. Everything should be programmable. If I can’t script it, it doesn’t fit in my workflow.
Pricing that rewards shipping. Charge for features, not for how often people read your changelog. Don’t penalize teams for communicating more frequently.
Simplicity over engagement features. I don’t need A/B testing for changelog headlines. I need to document what changed and move on.
The Opportunity
The good news: this gap is becoming obvious. More developers are building tools for developers. The “dev-first” approach that worked for Stripe, Vercel, and Linear is coming to every category.
Some changelog tools are starting to get it. They’re adding git integrations, CLI tools, and sensible pricing. But most are still bolting developer features onto marketing-first foundations.
The architecture matters. Tools designed for engagement optimization from day one will always treat developer workflow as an afterthought.
What To Do About It
If you’re stuck with a marketing-first changelog tool:
– Check if there’s an API you can script around the friction
– Consider keep-a-changelog format in your repo as the source of truth
– Push for better tooling in your org (sometimes it just takes asking)
If you’re evaluating tools:
– Ask for the CLI documentation first
– Check if git integration exists and actually works
– Look at the pricing model—per-user/per-visitor is a red flag
– Try writing a changelog entry and note how many clicks it takes
The tools we use shape the habits we build. Marketing-first tools train us to treat changelogs as announcements. Developer-first tools treat them as documentation.
I know which one I want.
Building ReleasePad to be the changelog tool I wish existed. More on that soon.