Community Engagement Platform

What it is

What a map-based community engagement platform does

A community engagement platform is the software a council, a city department, an agency or a consultancy uses to collect public input online and turn it into something a committee can act on. Most platforms are built around pages and forms: a project page, a survey, a comment box, a report. A map-based platform starts from a different question. Where? Where is the crossing unsafe, which street needs lighting, which route do you cycle, which corner of the park should stay as it is. People answer by marking the place, and the answer arrives with coordinates attached.

That changes what the team receives. A free-text comment that says 'the junction by the school is dangerous' has to be read, interpreted and geocoded by hand before it can be counted. A pin on that junction, with a follow-up question about why, is already a data point. Fifty of them are a cluster. Five hundred are evidence for a capital bid. This is what makes map-based community engagement a planning tool rather than a mailbox: the same software that collects the input also produces the map, the counts and the export the GIS team needs.

Local government teams call the same thing a public engagement platform, public participation software or public involvement software, depending on the country and the statute. Consultancies call it stakeholder engagement. Universities call it participatory GIS. Mapsurvey serves all of them with one survey builder: ordinary question types for the people, places and preferences, and map question types for the where. Each survey has a public link that opens on any phone, needs no account, and can be embedded in the project page you already have.

The platform is open source under the AGPLv3 licence. The hosted version runs on servers in the United States today; a team that needs the data to stay inside its own jurisdiction runs the same Docker stack on its own infrastructure, at no licence cost, and a choice of hosting region is on the Pro roadmap. Either way the data is yours: every response exports, every survey can be deleted, and nothing is locked behind a tier.

This page is about what the software does. A council procurement team working through the buying questions, from free plans to data ownership and uptime, will find them answered on the citizen engagement platform page.

How it works

From a question to a map of answers in an afternoon

1 · BUILD

Write the questions, add the map

Pick a point, line or polygon question for the where, attach follow-up questions to each mark, and upload your own reference layer, such as the proposed scheme or the existing network, so residents react to what you are actually planning.

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

2 · COLLECT

Share one link, no account needed

Residents open the link on a phone or a desktop, mark the map, answer the questions on each place and submit. Survey text can be offered in 75 languages, and a QR code on a poster or a flyer brings the offline audience in.

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

3 · ANALYZE

See every answer on one map

Filter by question and answer, switch to a heat map, open any single response, and clean out the test runs. The responses map is the working view for the team, not a report you wait for.

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

4 · SHARE

Export to GIS, publish the results

Download GeoJSON, CSV, Excel, GeoPackage, Shapefile or KML for the GIS team and the report, and publish an aggregated results page so residents see that their input was counted.

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

Why teams choose it

An engagement platform that speaks in places, not just text

Location-specific input

Participants respond exactly where the issue is: a junction, a route, a parcel. Points, lines and polygons, each with its own follow-up questions.

A map people build together

Show earlier contributions on a shared map and let residents react to them with a thumbs up or down and a comment, so the second week of an engagement builds on the first.

Your scheme on the map

Upload the proposal as a GeoJSON layer from any GIS. Residents comment on the features you drew, not on a blank basemap.

You own the data

Export everything, including the geometry, at any time. Self-host on your own infrastructure if your policies require it. No lock-in.

Open source (AGPLv3)

Auditable and adaptable. Procurement-friendly, and no black box between you and your community's input.

No per-project fees

Run as many engagements as you need on one workspace. Pricing that fits a public or non-profit budget, not enterprise licensing.

Compared

Mapsurvey vs Social Pinpoint and EngagementHQ

The two platforms most local-government buyers already have a quote from. Both are capable engagement hubs; the differences are the price, the licence and what a resident can draw.

	Mapsurvey	Social Pinpoint (Open Point)	EngagementHQ (Granicus)
Free tier for real projects	Yes, unlimited surveys and responses	No; pricing on request	No; limited trial subject to scoping
Pricing	Published: free, or one flat workspace price	Quote only; no current public price list, map tools on a higher tier	Quote only
Open source / self-hosting	Yes, AGPLv3, Docker on your servers	No, SaaS only	No, SaaS only
What a respondent can draw	Points, lines and polygons, each with follow-up questions	Point markers on the current Social Map; lines and shapes were a legacy Classic feature	Pin drop on the Places tool; line or polygon drawing by respondents not published
GIS export of responses	GeoJSON, GeoPackage, Shapefile, KML, plus CSV and Excel	XLS, CSV, PDF and GeoJSON from Social Map reporting	Excel, CSV, PDF; GIS formats not published
Respondent account	None needed	Not published	Unverified participation allowed on Places; registration configurable
Languages	75, included	Multilingual add-on	Not published
Hosting region	United States (hosted), or self-host anywhere	AWS in the nominated country	AWS per jurisdiction (US, Canada, UK, Australia)
Accessibility statement	No formal conformance audit yet	WCAG 2.2 AA alignment, VPAT	WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA, ISO 27001

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

When Social Pinpoint or EngagementHQ may fit better

You want a full engagement hub with project pages, news, document libraries, forums and a stakeholder CRM in one contract, and the budget to match.
Your procurement requires a formal WCAG conformance report or ISO 27001 certificate from the vendor today.
You are already running one and the switching cost outweighs the savings; Mapsurvey can still run the map part of a single project alongside it.

Comparing platforms? Talk to the person who builds this one

Mapsurvey is independent and founder-led. Email the developer directly with a migration, self-hosting, data-processing or 'does it do X?' question and you will get an answer from the person who can change the product.

Email the developer

Who runs engagement on it

One platform, every kind of engagement

Community engagement means something different to each team, but the where is the same question everywhere. These are the projects teams run on Mapsurvey most often:

Neighbourhood and local plans: what to keep, fix or change, pinned to the map street by street.
Mobility and active travel: cycle routes, barriers, dangerous crossings and desire lines drawn as lines, not described in words.
Participatory budgeting: where residents want the money spent, with a reaction round on the shortlisted locations.
Parks, public space and greening: location-specific priorities, from a bench to a whole park boundary.
Asset and condition surveys: residents or volunteers report what they find at the place they found it, with a photo.
Statutory consultation: comments and objections tied to the exact site, route or junction in the proposal.

Create your first engagement — free Compare to Maptionnaire

Pricing

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

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

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.

Public consultation softwareStatutory and planning consultations answered on the map. Citizen engagement platformFor local-government buyers: free plan, price, data ownership, uptime. Civic engagementMethods that work on a map, from neighbourhood plans to safety audits. 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 local governmentCouncils, cities and agencies running engagement in-house.

From the field

Community engagement projects built with Mapsurvey

Remington residents map their neighborhood plan

Case study Lessons learned

Baltimore, Maryland · Neighborhood planning

Remington residents map their neighborhood plan

Remington, a Baltimore neighborhood of row homes between Johns Hopkins and the Jones Falls, is updating its community plan. Before the planners drew anything, residents marked the map.

146 residents717 places marked3 map questionsEnglish and Spanish

Greater Remington Improvement Association Read the story →

Olney's white squirrel count, from paper maps to mobile devices

Case study

Olney, Illinois · Municipality

Olney's white squirrel count, from paper maps to mobile devices

Olney, Illinois, calls itself the Home of the White Squirrels. The City has counted them every year since 1977. This year the count moved online and expanded.

Since 197735 count areas~100 volunteersYear-round reporting

City of Olney, Illinois Read the story →

All stories on this topic →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is a community engagement platform?

Software a council, agency or consultancy uses to collect public input online: surveys, comments and, in a map-based platform like Mapsurvey, places. Residents open a link, mark the locations their answer is about and answer the questions attached to each one; the team gets a map and a table of every response instead of a mailbox of free text.

How much does a community engagement platform cost?

Mapsurvey is free for a real project: unlimited surveys, respondents and team members at $0, hosted or self-hosted. Pro is $49 a month or $490 a year per workspace, with any number of users. The established vendors sell by quote only: none publishes a current price list, and a council learns the figure from sales, usually per instance and per year.

Is there a free community engagement platform for local government?

Yes. Mapsurvey's Free plan is the full product, not a trial: every question type including point, line and polygon input, follow-up questions on each place, 75 languages and every export format. It is open source (AGPLv3), so a council IT team can also run it on its own servers at no licence cost.

What can residents mark on the map?

Respondents can drop points, draw lines (routes), and outline polygons (areas) directly on the map, alongside ordinary survey questions.

Do community members need an account to take part?

No. Respondents open a public link and answer on the map — no sign-up or login required. Only survey creators need an account.

Where is the data hosted, and can we self-host?

The hosted service runs in the United States today (Render, Oregon). Teams that need EU data residency self-host the Docker stack on their own infrastructure; a choice of hosting region is on the Pro roadmap. Either way the data is yours to export and delete.

Do we own the data we collect?

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.