Migrating from another changelog tool

sourcesintegrations

Drumroll can import your existing changelog from any tool that exposes a public RSS or Atom feed - which is every major changelog SaaS: Beamer, Headway, Featurebase, Canny, Olvy, AnnounceKit, plus most DIY changelog pages. One importer covers all of them.

This is a one-shot import, not an ongoing sync. Run it once when you migrate, then keep publishing on Drumroll. If you publish on both tools in parallel, the second import will create duplicates (we dedupe by source guid, not by title).

What gets imported

  • Every published item in the feed. Most feeds return the last 20-50 items; older entries are dropped by the source tool.
  • Title, body HTML, publish date, categories as tags. We preserve the original date so chronology is correct.
  • Inline images, rehosted to your Drumroll workspace bucket. This is important - if you cancel your old account, the images don't 404.

What doesn’t

  • Drafts and internal-only entries - RSS only exposes published items. Re-create those manually on Drumroll if you need them.
  • Reactions, view counts, subscriber lists - engagement data is locked to the source tool. Subscribers re-subscribe via Drumroll’s RSS or email widget.
  • Custom domain and branding - those are workspace-level config, not content. Re-configure them in Drumroll Settings.
  • Roadmap items, feedback boards - separate product surfaces, not part of the changelog feed.

Step 1 - Find your RSS feed URL

Every major tool exposes one. Here’s where to look:

  • Beamer: https://app.getbeamer.com/feed/<your-workspace>.rss
  • Headway: https://headwayapp.co/<your-slug>/changelog.rss
  • Featurebase: https://<your-domain>/changelog/rss
  • Canny: https://<your-workspace>.canny.io/changelog/rss
  • Olvy: https://<your-workspace>.olvy.co/rss.xml
  • AnnounceKit: https://<your-slug>.announcekit.app/feed

If your tool isn't listed, look for an RSS icon in the public page footer, or view the page source and search for application/rss+xml.

Step 2 - Run the importer

  1. Sign in to Drumroll and pick the workspace you want to import into.
  2. Go to /admin/<your-slug>/import (or click Open importer from the Integrations page).
  3. Paste the RSS URL and click Preview.
  4. Drumroll fetches the feed, shows you the feed title, item count, and the first 5 entries. Sanity-check.
  5. Click Import N entries.

Import takes a few seconds plus image-rehosting time. A feed with 30 entries and 50 inline screenshots typically completes in under a minute.

How re-imports behave

Each entry is deduped by rss:<guid> using the guid the source tool emits. Re-running the same import:

  • Skips entries that are already in Drumroll (matched by guid).
  • Updates the title, body, date, and tags of any entry whose guid matches but whose content has changed in the source.
  • Never demotes a published entry to draft.
  • Never deletes a Drumroll entry, even if the source removes it.

Image rehosting

For every <img> in an imported entry, Drumroll:

  1. Fetches the image (max 8MB per image, 20 images per entry).
  2. Verifies the content type is a real image (PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF). SVG is rejected to prevent stored XSS.
  3. Uploads to your workspace’s R2 bucket under <slug>/rss-import/<import-id>/.
  4. Rewrites the entry’s HTML to point at cdn.usedrumroll.com.

If an image fails to fetch (network error, dead URL, too large), Drumroll leaves the original URL intact and reports the count in the import summary.

Cleaning up the old tool

After the import, before you cancel:

  • Verify all the entries you care about made it across in /admin/<slug>.
  • Point your custom domain at Drumroll (instructions in Settings → Domain).
  • Update any links to the old changelog (in your app, email footers, social) to point at the new URL.
  • Cancel the old subscription.