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CivicRecordsOnline
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For city clerks and records specialists

Public records requests without the scramble.

Every request, deadline, and redaction in one place. Automatic redaction is included from $99 a month — and the price is on this page, not behind a demo call.

Start your free 14-day trial

Free for eligible government agencies. No credit card to try it. Most eligible .gov signups open immediately; other agencies are reviewed within one business day.

The whole product in six minutes — intake, deadlines, redaction, and release. No sign-up and no sales call to watch it. The walkthrough shows the fictional City of Paldam.
Price on the page $99 to $499 a month. Not "request a demo." Not a custom quote.
P-card friendly Every tier is under $500/mo — a department card covers it. No council vote. No RFP.
Redaction included, not sold back to you The automatic redaction competitors sell as a paid add-on comes standard here — pattern-based, not AI guessing, and your records never train an outside model.
Set up this afternoon No vendor consultants. No implementation fee. Sign up and take your first request the same day.

What it does

Everything you need to manage records requests. Nothing you do not.

The whole redaction suite, included

Instant Privacy Scan drafts the black boxes automatically. Find & Fix Everywhere erases a name from every page in one pass. The Permanent Safety Lock bakes them into the release copy for good. In every plan, from $99. See how redaction works.

Deadlines that track themselves

The system knows your state's response window, counts business days, skips holidays, and reminds you before anything is overdue.

Requesters check their own status

A public page where people submit requests and follow along. No account to create, no phone call to your desk.

Stop fulfilling duplicates

If a record was already released, the requester downloads it instantly from your Released Records Portal. Fewer repeat requests, less repeat work.

Track fees, not card data

Assess copy fees and mark them paid, due, or waived. Your city collects payment its own way — we never store card or bank numbers.

A complete paper trail

Every action is logged: who did what, when, and why. Export the full history as a PDF if a request ever ends up in court.

Emails come from your city

Requesters hear from your city's address, not an unknown software company. It looks official because it is official.

Built-in helpdesk for your team

Open a support ticket from inside the app and watch it through to resolution. The ticket history stays with the agency, not with the clerk who leaves.

How it works

From the moment a request comes in to the moment it is closed.

Every request follows the same path. You always know where things stand, what is due, and what needs your attention today.

  1. Request comes in

    Through the public portal, a forwarded email, or entered by hand. The deadline clock starts automatically from your state's rules.

    A resident submitting a public records request on the portal intake form.

  2. Route and track

    Assign the request to a department and a lead clerk. Color-coded deadlines and daily reminders make sure nothing slips.

    A request assigned to a department and lead clerk.

  3. Gather, redact, release

    Upload the files, run the Instant Privacy Scan or Find & Fix Everywhere, tag each black box with its exemption code, and release through a secure link or your Released Records Portal.

    Close crop of a City of Paldam personnel record with draft redaction boxes over the fictional employee's personal information.

  4. Report when needed

    Annual compliance reports, response times, request volume by department. Ready when council or your state asks.

    An annual public records report with summary figures.
A request deadline panel showing the due date, days remaining, and the extension control.
Every request shows its state-law due date, days remaining, and whether an extension is allowed.
See the full product tour →

Predictable redactions, not AI guesses

Same input, same answer, every time.

One Social Security number left in a released file is the mistake every clerk remembers. The scan, the review, and the lock exist so it never happens.

Enterprise platforms sell machine-learning redaction as a paid add-on — results that drift between releases and are hard to defend in an audit. CivicRecordsOnline uses a pattern-based engine instead: the same document gets the same answer every time, the full review trail lands in the audit log, and your records never train an outside AI model.

Instant Privacy Scan Finds Social Security numbers, phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, addresses, driver license numbers, and card numbers — drafted as black boxes you review before anything is released.
Find & Fix Everywhere Type a name or phrase once and mark it on every page of a 500-page document in one pass.
Sensitive Details Check Flags health details — conditions, treatment, mental-health mentions — and the names of minors, so what your state's law requires you to withhold does not slip past an ordinary search.
Permanent Safety Lock Published redactions are baked into a flattened release copy no one can peel back. The original stays untouched in your files, and every change is logged.
Scanned-paper reading Reads the text out of scanned PDFs and images, so the scan and bulk erase work on historical paper records too.
A City of Paldam personnel record open in the redaction editor with draft boxes over the fictional employee's personal information.
Redact in the browser — every draft box is yours to confirm before the release copy is locked.
Instant Privacy Scan category checkboxes for SSNs, phone numbers, emails and more.
Pick what to find. Check the kinds of private details to look for — the scan drafts a box over every match.
Find & Fix Everywhere search box that redacts a phrase across every page.
Fix it everywhere at once. A name a pattern can't know? Type it once and it is marked on every page.
The Permanent Safety Lock control with a locked-redaction counter.
Lock it for good. The release copy is flattened — the text under the black boxes is not hidden, it is gone.

Switching from another system?

Bring your request history with you.

The CivicRecordsOnline bulk importer reads request-export CSVs from NextRequest, GovQA, JustFOIA, FOIAXpress, and MyGovHub directly — preserving original dates, statuses, requester contacts, and source IDs. The clerk does it self-serve from Settings; there is no vendor migration project and no fee. Your documents stay in the old system as a read-only archive while CivicRecordsOnline becomes the system of record for new requests.

NextRequest alternative Compare CivicRecordsOnline with CivicPlus-oriented request management. GovQA alternative Compare a Granicus-style platform with a simpler clerk-focused workflow. JustFOIA alternative Compare established FOIA tooling with self-serve setup and monthly pricing. FOIAXpress alternative Compare federal-scale FOIA case management with local-agency request tracking. Tyler Technologies alternative Compare broad enterprise government software with a dedicated records workflow. All alternatives See the comparison hub and evaluation criteria for records request software.

Priced for real city budgets

$1,188 to $5,988 a year. Not $15,000 to $50,000.

Enterprise records platforms typically run $15,000 to $50,000 a year in published city contracts, plus implementation fees and paid redaction add-ons. CivicRecordsOnline District is $1,188 a year. City is $3,588, and Metro is $5,988 for the highest-volume agencies — each with the full redaction suite already in it.

Buy it on your P-card today Every tier is under $500/mo — inside normal department purchasing card limits. No RFP. No council vote. No procurement officer.
No annual contract required Monthly subscription. Cancel anytime. Try it for a month; if it works, keep it.
No implementation fee Enterprise platforms charge a one-time setup fee on top of the contract. CivicRecordsOnline is $0 to start — you configure it yourself in an afternoon.
Published limits, no surprise meters Every tier shows its included annual requests up front, and admins see a projected-usage warning early — so you review plan fit before anything runs over.

Free trial

Try it free. No demo, no discovery call, no sales rep.

Government software usually means weeks of vendor calls before you even see the product. Here, any eligible government agency can start a 14-day free trial of the real platform — the full product, not a sales sandbox — and be taking requests the same afternoon.

.gov agencies start the same day Sign up with your .gov email, confirm the verification link, and the trial begins immediately — no approval queue.
Other agencies within one business day Cities, counties, and districts on a .us or .org domain get the same trial — we just confirm you are a genuine public agency first.
No card and no contract to try it The trial never asks for payment details. If it fits your office, you pick a plan; if not, nothing happens.
Start your free 14-day trial

Most eligible .gov signups open immediately · no credit card required

Simple pricing

Pick the size that fits your office. Pay it on a P-card.

The full privacy and redaction suite is in every tier — Instant Privacy Scan, Find & Fix Everywhere, Permanent Safety Lock, Sensitive Details Check, and scanned-paper reading — along with the public requester portal, the Released Records Portal, deadline tracking for all 50 states, fee tracking, and the audit trail. Monthly billing, cancel anytime, no annual contract.

District

$99/mo

  • 300 included requests per year
  • 5 staff seats
  • 100 GB document storage
  • Full redaction suite and both public portals
  • Built-in helpdesk for your team
  • Sign in with Microsoft or Google — no IT setup

Special districts and small towns.

Start free trial

Town

$199/mo

  • 1,500 included requests per year
  • 15 staff seats
  • 500 GB document storage
  • Everything in District
  • Custom request forms
  • Custom email sending domain
  • Priority helpdesk queue

Growing clerk offices and small counties.

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Most common for city halls

City

$299/mo

  • 3,000 included requests per year
  • Unlimited staff seats
  • 2 TB document storage
  • Everything in Town
  • Advanced reporting
  • Dedicated support contact

Active city halls.

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Metro

$499/mo

  • Unlimited requests per year
  • Unlimited staff seats
  • 5 TB document storage
  • Everything in City
  • Custom reports

High-volume consolidated agencies.

Start free trial

District, Town, and City include the annual request amounts shown above; Metro has no request cap. If usage is heading past a limit, admins get a projected-usage warning early and the account keeps accepting requests — review whether the next tier fits, nothing shuts off. No paid redaction module, no setup fee, no annual contract. Prefer to pay yearly by invoice instead of monthly? Email billing@civicrecordsonline.com and we'll set it up.

For your IT director and city attorney

The boring details, ready for your security review.

The redaction workflow is a deterministic pattern-matching engine with literal and regex string matching, plus OCR layers for scanned documents and a separate output step that flattens the release copy. All data is stored on Microsoft Azure in US data centers, encrypted AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit, with role-based access control and an immutable audit trail of every action. Subscription payments are handled by Stripe; CivicRecordsOnline does not store card numbers.

CivicRecordsOnline is intentionally not CJIS-audited or HIPAA-compliant, and redaction covers documents and images — not video or body-cam footage. We focus on standard municipal records — zoning, permits, council correspondence, public crime statistics, contracts, public works — and pass the savings from skipping that compliance overhead back to the city as the monthly price. See the full IT & security overview →

CivicRecordsOnline is built and operated by PALDAM LLC, a US company in Sacramento, California.

US-hosted Microsoft Azure AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2+ in transit. No offshore processing. No offshore support.
Browser only, nothing to install No VPN, no firewall rules, no on-prem hardware. Staff sign in with Microsoft or Google.
Role-based access control Staff see only what their role allows. Every action recorded immutably.
Your data is never sold We do not sell, share, or use your records data for anything other than running the service.
Security documentation on request Vendor questionnaire, insurance certificates, and data handling policies for IT review. IT & security overview →
Export your data anytime Full export of requests, documents, and audit history in standard formats. No lock-in.

On the roadmap

Features we are building after launch: