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The Tyler Technologies alternative when records requests are all you actually need.

Tyler sells records request management as one piece of a sprawling enterprise government-software suite, with document management as a separate add-on and federal-FOIA features you will never use. CivicRecordsOnline is the focused product: intake, deadlines, automatic privacy scanning, bulk find-and-erase, release, and audit — $99 to $499 per month, on your P-card, with no procurement officer required.

Why clerks switch from Tyler

Enterprise suite priced like an enterprise suite Tyler FOIA Request Management comes through the same quote-driven enterprise sales motion as Tyler's larger products. CivicRecordsOnline publishes every number on the page: $99 to $499 per month.

Document management as a separate module Tyler's optional Document Management module is where redaction, annotation, and storage live — sold on top of the base contract. CivicRecordsOnline bundles document storage, automatic privacy scanning, and bulk erase into every plan.

Built for federal FOIA, not city PRA Tyler's FOIA product is designed around federal executive-branch FOIA, DOJ Annual FOIA Report generation, and Inspector General workflows. Cities and towns do not need any of that. CivicRecordsOnline configures every state's public records law and tracks deadlines accordingly.

You do not need a multi-product Tyler relationship Tyler is most efficient when you already run Tyler ERP, courts, public safety, or 311. If you do not, you are paying enterprise-suite prices for one slice. CivicRecordsOnline is the slice, sold by itself, monthly.

Side by side

What you are evaluating	Tyler FOIA Request Management	CivicRecordsOnline
Scope	Federal FOIA case management inside a broad enterprise government suite.	Focused city records request workflow. One product, sold by itself.
Pricing	Quote-only. Custom enterprise contract.	Published. $99 / $199 / $299 / $499 per month.
Approval path	Procurement, RFP, often council approval.	Department P-card. No annual contract required.
Document management & redaction	Optional add-on module.	Included in every tier. 100 GB to 5 TB storage. Privacy scan, bulk erase, draft review.
Automatic privacy scanning	Inside the optional Document Management module.	Included. Finds names, addresses, SSNs, phone numbers, license numbers, and more.
Bulk find-and-erase across documents	Inside the optional Document Management module.	Included. Type a name once, erase across 500 pages.
State-specific PRA deadline tracking	Federal-FOIA orientation.	All 50 states configured. Business-day math, state holidays, paused-clock rules.
Time to first real request	Vendor-led implementation across the suite.	Configure intake, deadlines, staff, and portal in an afternoon.
Bring your request history	Vendor migration project. Professional services engagement.	Self-serve CSV importer (generic format works for Tyler exports).

What you actually get in every plan

Tools Tyler unbundles into its Document Management module are all included in the $99/mo District plan and up.

Instant Privacy Scan Finds names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, license numbers, credit cards, and more automatically. You review each one before anything is released.

Find & Fix Everywhere Type a name, address, or phrase once and erase it across every page of a 500-page document in one pass.

Permanent Safety Lock When the release copy is published, your redactions are locked permanently. Your original file stays untouched in the audit trail.

Smart Medical Catching Flags complicated health terms, sensitive medical codes, dates of birth in context, and minor names that ordinary search tools miss.

Scanned-paper reading Reads text out of scanned PDFs and images so the privacy scan and bulk erase work on historical paper records too.

State-aware deadlines All 50 states' public records laws configured. Business-day math, state and local holidays, paused-clock reasons. Color-coded reminders before anything goes overdue.

Already on Tyler? Bring your history with you.

CivicRecordsOnline ships with a self-serve bulk importer. Export your request log out of Tyler as a CSV, upload the file from Settings → Bulk Import using the generic CSV format, and your request history loads with the original dates, statuses, requester contact information, and source IDs preserved. The clerk does it — no vendor migration project, no professional services engagement, no implementation fee.

The importer also includes direct mappings for NextRequest, GovQA, JustFOIA, FOIAXpress, and MyGovHub exports if you are evaluating multiple systems. Note: the importer covers request history metadata. Moving the actual document files and attachments from your old system is on you.

For your IT director and city attorney

The redaction workflow is a deterministic pattern-matching engine, not a generative AI model. Same input, same output, every time — defensible in audit and easy to explain to a judge. Agency records are never sent to train external models. All data is stored on Microsoft Azure in US data centers, encrypted AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit, with role-based access control and an immutable audit trail of every action.

CivicRecordsOnline is not in CJIS or HIPAA compliance scope — it focuses on standard municipal records (zoning, permits, council correspondence, public crime statistics, contracts, public works) and passes the savings from skipping that compliance overhead back to the city as the monthly price. See the full IT & security overview →

Who CivicRecordsOnline is not built for

We are honest about scope. CivicRecordsOnline is not the right tool if any of the following describe your office:

You already run Tyler ERP, Tyler Courts, Tyler Public Safety, or other Tyler products and want one vendor across the whole municipal software stack.
You are a federal executive-branch agency required to generate the DOJ Annual FOIA Report or coordinate Inspector General investigations.
You handle CJIS criminal justice records or HIPAA-covered medical records. CivicRecordsOnline is intentionally out of those compliance scopes — that is how we keep the price under $500/mo.

Use the same lens against the rest of the market.

See the price. Start the trial. Skip the enterprise suite.

Join the waitlist and we will email the day .gov trials open. From $99/mo. P-card friendly. No annual contract required.