Hi—I’m Andrew North. Before I started Northpoint Web I spent nights tinkering on bulletin-board systems and teaching myself HTML from library books. That background still shapes how I approach municipal websites: they should do actual work, not just sit online. If your city is thinking about replacing CivicPlus, here’s a practical checklist that will help you ask the right questions during procurement and demos.
What this checklist covers (read first)
This article focuses on the operational questions city managers and procurement leads need answered: migration continuity, who owns and can export your data, how public forms and workflows are handled, whether code and ordinances can be published cleanly, and how staff access and permissions are managed. It’s written for small cities in Utah, but these topics apply to most small municipal governments.
Migration and continuity: Will my site break when you switch?
Ask vendors how they handle migration and what stays live during the transition. Specific questions:
What stays live during migration? Confirm whether the current public site can remain online while content and forms are moved to a staging environment. Downtime is rarely acceptable for essential municipal info.
What content will be migrated automatically? Request a list: pages, attachments, calendars, staff directories, meeting agendas, archived PDFs, and current forms. For anything not migrated automatically, ask for a documented export process.
Who tests and signs off? Request a migration checklist and a sign-off step so your clerk or IT lead can verify critical pages and services before DNS changes.
Data ownership and exportability
Make sure you won’t be locked in. Useful vendor answers include an ability to export full site content as standard files (HTML/PDF/CSV/JSON) and export form submissions and service-request records in readable formats. Ask:
How do you export public records and submissions? Get a sample exported package and confirm it includes metadata (timestamps, user info, attachments).
Where is my data hosted? Ask for hosting location details, backup frequency, and how long backups are retained. If you want on-premise or a specific region, clarify that during procurement.
Public forms and workflows: not just pretty forms
Forms are often the reason cities switch vendors. The important questions are about reliability and what happens after a form is submitted:
Are submissions stored persistently? Confirm that submissions aren’t only emailed. They should be stored in a managed system with search, status, and assignment features.
Can forms trigger internal workflows? Ask whether forms can create trackable requests, assign staff, add internal notes, set due dates, and send status updates to residents. If the vendor can’t do this, ask if they integrate with systems that can.
If you want a deeper explanation of managed form workflows and how to avoid losing submissions, see our guide on building a managed service center into WordPress: How to Stop Losing Form Submissions: Build a Managed Service Center into Your WordPress Site.
Publishing municipal code, ordinances, and public documents
Publishing code and meeting documents is a public-accessibility and usability issue. Questions to ask:
Does the system support searchable, versioned code? You should be able to publish ordinances with clear effective dates, searchable text, and a visible amendment history.
Can staff publish agendas and minutes without developer help? Look for a solution that lets nontechnical staff upload and tag documents, set meeting dates, and produce a public archive automatically.
Staff permissions and administration
Small city staff wear many hats. Your CMS needs flexible but accountable permissions.
How granular are roles and permissions? Confirm that you can set department-based access (public works, planning, finance), limit who can publish to public pages, and who can only draft or edit.
Is there an audit trail? Your system should record who changed what and when, and allow rollbacks for accidental publishes.
Business apps and integrations: Make the website work for staff
Ask vendors how their solution supports municipal workflows rather than only page updates. Practical questions:
Can the website host staff dashboards and internal tools? A good platform will support staff portals, service-request tracking, and content management without forcing a separate application.
What integrations are available? Common needs include payment processors, GIS/maps, calendar feeds, and email/notification systems. Ask for examples of existing integrations and whether APIs or webhooks are available for custom connections.
For a deeper look at turning a WordPress site into an administrative platform, read about how Northpoint Core can help: Northpoint Core, and consider our municipal-focused modules like Formularios Cívicos de Northpoint for modern form and submission management. If you want a CivicPlus-style alternative overview, see: Looking for a CivicPlus Alternative? A Modern Website Option for Small Cities.
Maintenance, security, and accessibility
Don’t treat maintenance as an afterthought. Ask about update schedules, backup testing, and how accessibility issues are managed. Instead of promises, request a maintenance plan that lists responsibilities, typical response times for outages, and an accessibility review process.
Decision framework: how to compare proposals
When comparing vendors, use a simple scoring table with these weighted categories: migration plan and downtime risk, data ownership/export, forms and workflow capability, staff permissions and admin tooling, integrations and business apps, and maintenance/hosting plan. Require vendors to demonstrate each category on a staging site using a short checklist.
Final notes and a short historical perspective
Switching a municipal website is more than a vendor swap; it’s a process change for staff and residents. I learned early on—back in the dial-up and BBS days—that systems do best when they’re built to be usable, understandable, and owned by the people who rely on them. Your website should be working for the city 24 hours a day, not just hosting PDFs.
If you want help turning this checklist into an RFP, or want a technical review of a CivicPlus replacement proposal, tell us what is difficult about managing your current website and we’ll identify the practical next step. Request a Northpoint website review to discuss migration, forms, hosting, or staff permissions, or schedule a conversation about integrating municipal business apps without rebuilding everything.
Need a better way to manage public requests, content, staff access, or website updates? Let’s talk about the tools your organization actually needs.
