Civic engagement that happens on the map

Civic engagement works when residents can say precisely where something matters, not just that it does. Mapsurvey turns civic participation into spatial input: people pin places, draw routes and outline areas, then answer a question or two about each one. Your team gets evidence with coordinates instead of a pile of free-text comments. Open source, free to start, no account for participants, and self-hostable when the data has to stay in-house.

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Free & open source Point, line and polygon input GeoJSON, Excel, Shapefile export No account for participants

What it is

Map-based civic engagement, in plain words

Civic engagement is residents taking part in the decisions that shape where they live: a consultation on a road scheme, a participatory budget, a neighbourhood plan, a safety audit, a vote on what the park should become. Community engagement is the same relationship seen from the organisation's side, and a civic engagement platform is the software that runs it. Whatever the label, most of the input a city asks for has a location. The crossing. The dark path. The route to school. The corner where the market should be.

Map-based community engagement makes that location the answer format. Instead of a text box that asks people to describe a place, the survey asks them to mark it: a point for a spot, a line for a route, a polygon for an area. One or two short questions sit on each mark, so the why travels with the where. The result is community engagement mapping in the literal sense: every contribution is a feature with coordinates, and a hundred contributions are a layer the planning team can open in its GIS, filter, count and overlay on the plan.

It also widens who takes part. A public meeting reaches the people who can be in a room on a weekday evening. A link on a phone reaches parents, shift workers, students and the residents who would never speak in a hall but will happily draw the route they cycle every morning. Participation needs no account and takes minutes, and the survey text can be shown in 75 languages, which matters in a district where the council's language is not everyone's first.

Mapsurvey is open source under the AGPLv3 licence and free to run at any scale. A city workspace holds any number of surveys and team members; each survey has its own link, its own results map and its own public results page. The hosted service runs in the United States; a city that must keep residents' data on its own servers runs the same software there.

This page is about the methods. The community engagement platform page describes the software itself, and the citizen engagement platform page answers a council's buying questions: free plan, price for a small jurisdiction, data ownership, uptime.

How to engage people on a map

Four steps that turn a question into a layer

1 · BUILD

Ask one concrete question per map

'Where do you feel unsafe cycling?' beats 'Tell us about cycling'. Choose the geometry that fits the answer, attach a short follow-up question to each mark, and add your own layer, such as the existing network or the draft plan, so people react to something real.

Mapsurvey layer editor: ten Copenhagen cycling bridges with categories, photos and descriptions
2 · COLLECT

Share a link, not a form

A link in the newsletter, a QR code at the bus stop, an embed on the project page. Residents mark the map on their phone and answer the questions on each place. Show earlier contributions on a shared map and let people react to them, so the engagement is a conversation, not a mailbox.

A respondent opens a bridge card with a photo, reactions from others and a thumbs up or down question
3 · ANALYZE

Count, filter, overlay

See every contribution on one map, filter by answer, switch to a heat map, open single responses, and clean out the test runs. Clusters appear on their own; the follow-up answers explain them.

Mapsurvey Responses map: routes, unsafe spots and bridges across Copenhagen
4 · SHARE

Show people their input was used

Publish an aggregated results page, export the layer to the GIS for the plan, and run the next round on top of this one. Trust in civic participation comes from the loop closing in public.

Public results page with the response count, a link to take the survey, and charts

Why spatial

Civic participation is about places

Precise, not vague

'The crossing by the school is dangerous' beats 'traffic is bad'. Spatial input makes civic involvement actionable for planners and engineers.

Wider reach than meetings

An online map reaches residents who never attend a town hall. A link is all they need, in any of 75 languages.

Evidence you can defend

Every contribution is a data point with coordinates. Aggregate, filter and map the input, then show your community you used it.

A conversation, not a mailbox

Residents see what others marked and react with a thumbs up or down and a comment, so the second week builds on the first.

Owned, not rented

Open source (AGPLv3) with GeoJSON, Excel and Shapefile export. Your community's input stays yours; self-host it if your policies require.

Free at city scale

No per-survey, per-seat or per-response fees. One workspace runs every engagement of the year.

Compared

Mapsurvey vs Go Vocal and Consul

Two civic participation suites a city is likely to be evaluating: one commercial, one open source. Both do far more than maps. The question is whether you need a democracy platform or a map that people can answer on by Friday.

 MapsurveyGo Vocal (ex-CitizenLab)Consul
Free tier for real projectsYes, hosted, unlimited surveys and responsesFree Edition to run yourself; hosted plans by quoteFree software; hosting and support from partners
PricingPublished: free, or one flat workspace priceQuote only; per-licence, per-year rates listed on UK G-CloudSoftware free; partner hosting prices not published
Open source / self-hostingYes, AGPLv3, Docker on your serversFree Edition under AGPLv3; commercial edition SaaS onlyYes, AGPLv3
What a respondent can drawPoints, lines and polygons, each with follow-up questionsPins, lines and polygonsA location on a proposal; line or polygon drawing not published
GIS export of responsesGeoJSON, GeoPackage, Shapefile, KML, plus CSV and ExcelCSV, XLSX, PDF; a unified format described as importable in GIS toolsNot published
Respondent accountNone neededNot published; identity federation offeredRegistration required to propose, comment or vote
Languages75, included27, plus auto-translation on higher plansCommunity-translated; count not published
ScopeMap-based surveys, shared maps, results pagesFull participation suite: ideation, voting, participatory budgeting, surveys, mapsFull democracy suite: proposals, debates, voting, participatory budgeting
Accessibility statementNo formal conformance audit yetWCAG 2.2 AA, ISO 27001Follows WCAG; level not declared

Competitor details reflect the vendors' published pages, documentation and UK G-Cloud listings as of October 2026; verify current specifics with the vendor or the project. 'Not published' means the public material does not say.

When Go Vocal or Consul may fit better

  • You are building a standing participation portal for the whole city, with proposals, debates, voting and a participatory budget under one login, and you have the team to run it.
  • Your procurement requires a vendor with a formal WCAG conformance report and an ISO 27001 certificate today.
  • You already run one. Mapsurvey can still carry the map question of a single project and hand the layer back.

Planning a civic engagement project? Talk to the person who builds this

Mapsurvey is independent and founder-led. Describe the decision you are engaging on and you will get a reply from the developer, often with a draft survey you can open the same day.

Email the developer

Methods

Civic engagement methods that work on a map

Run your first engagement — free Read how others did it

Pricing

Free to run a real project. One flat price when you need more.

Free
$0
forever, hosted or self-hosted

Not a trial and not a sandbox: the whole collection and analysis product, with no cap on surveys, respondents or team members.

  • Every question type, including point, line and polygon on the map
  • Follow-up questions attached to each place a respondent marks
  • Unlimited surveys, responses and team members
  • Survey text in 75 languages
  • Export as GeoJSON, CSV, Excel, GeoPackage, Shapefile or KML
  • Responses map, filters, heat maps and charts
  • Self-host the open-source code (AGPLv3) on your own servers
Create a free account
Proearly access
$49
a month, or $490 a year, per workspace

One workspace, any number of users, surveys and responses. No per-project, per-seat or per-response metering, so a consultancy can run every engagement of the year on one line item.

  • Everything in Free
  • Public results pages for residents and councillors
  • Direct support from the developer who builds the product
  • Read-only access for clients and committees, custom domain and branding, and a choice of hosting region, as they ship
See what Pro includes

Pro is in early access: the workspace price is fixed, the feature list is being finished with the first customers, and existing accounts keep what they have. If a grant or a council budget needs an invoice rather than a card, write to us.

Related

The same map, by the job you have

Community engagement platformThe product page: features, hosting, data ownership, price. Public consultation softwareStatutory and planning consultations answered on the map. Citizen engagement platformFor local-government buyers: free plan, price, data ownership, uptime. Participatory budgetingWhere residents want the money spent, pinned to the map. Participatory mapping toolsThe buyer's guide: fifteen tools in five categories, every fact sourced and dated. For urban plannersParticipatory planning and place-based public input.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is map-based civic engagement?
It lets residents show exactly where something matters, by pinning places, drawing routes and outlining areas, instead of leaving vague free-text comments. Officials get location-specific evidence they can count, map and act on.
How do you engage people on a map?
Ask one concrete question per map ("Where do you feel unsafe cycling?"), let people answer by marking the place, attach one or two short follow-up questions to each mark, share a link that needs no account, and show the results back on a public map so participants see their input was used.
What is the difference between civic engagement and community engagement?
In practice the terms overlap. Civic engagement usually means residents taking part in public decisions, from consultations to participatory budgeting; community engagement is the organisation's side of the same relationship, and a community engagement platform is the software that runs it. Mapsurvey serves both with the same map.
Is Mapsurvey free for civic engagement projects?
Yes. The Free plan is $0 with unlimited surveys and respondents; Pro is $49 a month or $490 a year per workspace for teams that want public results pages and direct support. No per-project fees either way.
Can one workspace run civic engagement for a whole city?
Yes. A workspace holds any number of surveys, team members and respondents, each survey has its own public link and results page, and every answer exports to the city's GIS.
Do participants need an account?
No. Respondents open a public link and answer on the map — no sign-up or login required. Only survey creators need an account.
Can we export the results?
Every response — including map geometry — exports as GeoJSON plus a CSV for non-spatial answers, so results drop straight into QGIS, ArcGIS, or a spreadsheet. You own the data.