PublicInput
Citizen engagement software
Public sector software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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What is PublicInput
PublicInput is a citizen engagement platform used by government agencies and public-sector organizations to collect, manage, and analyze public feedback for projects and policy decisions. It supports online surveys, mapping-based input, meeting and event engagement, and centralized comment management across multiple channels. The product is typically used by communications, planning, and public involvement teams to run engagement campaigns and report results. It differentiates through an engagement workflow that combines outreach, input collection, and reporting in one system.
Multi-channel engagement workflows
PublicInput supports multiple engagement methods such as surveys, interactive maps, forms, and event/meeting participation tools. This helps agencies run a consistent engagement process across different project types without stitching together separate tools. Centralized workflows reduce manual consolidation of comments from different sources. It fits common public involvement use cases such as transportation planning, comprehensive plans, and capital projects.
Centralized comment management
The platform provides a single place to store, categorize, and review public comments collected across engagement activities. This can improve traceability from raw input to themes and summaries used in staff reports. Teams can reduce reliance on spreadsheets for tagging and deduplication. It also supports exporting data for downstream analysis and recordkeeping.
Reporting and stakeholder updates
PublicInput includes tools to summarize engagement results and share updates back to stakeholders. This supports common public-sector requirements to document outreach, participation levels, and key themes. Built-in reporting can shorten the time needed to produce public-facing summaries compared with manual compilation. The product is oriented toward repeatable reporting across multiple projects.
Public-sector focused scope
PublicInput is designed primarily for government engagement and may be less suitable for private-sector customer research or broader CRM-style constituent management. Organizations looking for a full case management or service request platform may need additional systems. It typically complements, rather than replaces, permitting, licensing, or 311 workflows. Buyers should validate how it fits into their broader public-sector application stack.
Integration depth varies
Integrations with GIS, email/SMS distribution, and enterprise systems often depend on available connectors, APIs, and implementation effort. Agencies with complex data governance or identity requirements may need custom integration work. This can affect timelines for single sign-on, data synchronization, and automated publishing of results. Prospective customers should confirm supported integration patterns for their environment.
Advanced analytics may require exports
While the platform supports summarization and standard reporting, deeper statistical analysis or custom dashboards may require exporting data to external BI tools. Agencies that need complex segmentation, longitudinal analysis across many programs, or highly customized visualizations may find built-in reporting limiting. This can introduce additional tooling and analyst effort. Requirements for accessibility and public reporting formats should be validated during evaluation.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Listen | Request pricing (custom quote) | Designed for small teams or infrequent community engagement; includes online community engagement portal, multilingual & accessible surveys, interactive maps, and project websites. |
| Engage | Request pricing (custom quote) | For organizations of all sizes prioritizing representative feedback; includes meeting & in-person engagement tools, resident database (CRM), multi-channel communications (phone, email, text, social), targeted email outreach, and reporting & analytics. |
| Engage Plus | Request pricing (custom quote) | For larger organizations using multiple solutions; adds advanced analytics & reporting, advanced segmentation & equity mapping, community organization manager, custom website branding, enterprise controls, and GPT comment analysis tool. |
Notes: PublicInput lists plan names and feature groupings on its official pricing page but does not publish list prices; all three plans are shown as "Request Pricing" on the vendor site. Additional optional services (e.g., additional phone lines) and service fees are documented in the vendor support and terms pages (see notes).
