What each platform lets people do
Both platforms cover the methods most councils use day to day: surveys, map comments, polls, ideas boards, discussion and project pages.
Social Point builds each project page from blocks, with participation tools alongside timelines, key dates, events, news, document libraries, galleries, before-and-after image sliders and 360-degree views. That suits projects where people need to understand a place or a design before they comment. Fund It covers simple budget allocation, and in 2023 Social Pinpoint acquired MetroQuest, a visual survey tool used in transport and land-use planning.
Go Vocal lists more formal decision methods: participatory budgeting, voting and prioritization, citizen proposals, and Community Monitor for tracking sentiment over time. Form Sync scans paper forms into the same dataset as online responses. Document annotation and blended methods are in Premium and above.
Ask both vendors which methods your plan includes, how in-person and paper input reaches the same dataset, and how many languages your plan translates into. Go Vocal publishes language limits per plan.
Mapping and place-based engagement
Mapping is where Social Pinpoint built its name. Social Map lets people drop a pin and comment on a specific place, so you can see hotspots across a neighborhood or corridor, and teams can use their own Esri ArcGIS maps as the base layer.
Go Vocal puts mapping inside surveys. People can drop pins and draw lines or shapes in answer to a question, GIS staff can upload shapefiles, and responses export in a format other GIS tools can read. The direct Esri ArcGIS integration is in the Enterprise plan or as an add-on.
If your work is mostly place-based, such as transport, open space, town centers or infrastructure corridors, try both with one of your own maps during a demo.
AI analysis and reporting
Both vendors now offer AI-assisted analysis of open-text input.
- Go Vocal Sensemaking tags and groups contributions, writes editable summaries, finds trends across demographic groups and feeds into reports, and Go Vocal says outputs can be traced to the source input. Standard includes a light version; Premium and above include the advanced version.
- Social Point uses AI and natural language processing to surface sentiment, themes and patterns across responses, and the wider Open Point platform applies AI analysis to submissions, correspondence and transcripts.
Neither vendor names the AI models it uses. If your organization has an AI policy, ask each vendor which model providers process your data, where, and whether your data is used to train models.
Data hosting, security and accessibility
For public sector buyers, these questions often decide the shortlist.
- Hosting. Open Point says customer data, including backups, is stored in the customer’s jurisdiction or the closest acceptable location, on AWS and Microsoft Azure. Go Vocal says US client data is hosted in the US and Canadian client data in Canada; ask where data for other regions is hosted.
- Security. Open Point says it is ISO 27001 certified and has completed a SOC 2 audit. Go Vocal shows ISO/IEC 27001, GDPR and Cyber Essentials on its site. Ask both for current certificates and their scope.
- Accessibility. Both claim WCAG 2.2 AA. Open Point says its public-facing features have been independently assessed and publishes a VPAT. Ask both for their latest audit report.
How pricing works
Neither vendor publishes prices. Social Point is quoted on request. Go Vocal publishes its plan structure (Essential, Standard, Premium, Department and Enterprise) with limits on projects and seats, grouped by population size, and lets some Enterprise features be added to lower plans.
When comparing quotes, check which features each one actually includes: AI analysis, mapping integrations, translation, single sign-on, stakeholder management and support.
Questions to take into both demos
- Show us a project like ours, built on your platform, from start to report.
- Which participation methods, AI features and integrations are in the plan you are quoting?
- Where exactly will our data and backups be hosted, and which AI providers process it?
- How do in-person, phone and paper input get into the same record?
- Can we export everything, including raw responses, map data and analysis, in open formats?
- Can we see your latest accessibility audit and security certificates?